The Centre Cannot Hold
by amor-remanet
Summary: A case brings Spencer back in contact with his old mentor, but nothing can be as easy as it looks. Warnings: angst, drama, themes, slash; Reid/Morgan, Reid/JJ, JJ/Will LaMontagne, Reid/OFCs, Reid/Elle, Reid/Tobias Hankel, Gideon/OFC.
1. Chapter 1

Spencer hates tension. When awkward silences settle in, his first instinct is to start talking about something, anything -- statistics, interesting facts from history, the biological reasoning behind how much sugar he puts in his coffee, anything -- but, for the life of him, he can't think of anything to say right now.

No, that's a lie. It's hardly that he can't think of anything to say, but, rather, that he can think of far too much to say and none of it sounds right. All of the details are somehow different from the way he's imagined them, but they're nevertheless consistent, in their ways. He was right in thinking that they would choose a diner, but the patterned tiles on the floor are white and seafoam green, not red and yellow, or blue and brown, or rose and off-white. Everything is so small-town, from the waitresses' uniforms (starched, all matching, with each woman in the same sneakers, apron, and dress the same color as the tiles) to the day's specials on the chalkboard behind the cash register. The upper half of walls is the same green as the floor, with a line of checkerboard wallpaper pattern, peeling in places and separating the paint from inexplicable metal.

Spencer supposes that it's all meant to be comforting. If you dress a normal diner up in framed news clippings and pictures of the customers, in the smudgy fingerprints from local kids touching the metal, you can make it individual. In terms of atmosphere, he can feel the life cautiously replacing the trepidation that had been here only three days previously. Normal people would walk in here and feel right at home, instead of impossibly alone. The young married couple in the corner gossip without a care. The single mother reins in her three kids single-handedly and her eldest is no help with the younger ones. The elderly best friends compare regalia on their fishing hats and gab easily about where they're going, come Friday night.

It's all Spencer can do just to look across the table at Gideon, and he can't even manage that reliably.

Their server's name is Ellen. It says so in the clinically efficient typeface on her little red name tag. Were they meeting under different circumstances, Spencer might not be so awkward with her, but, when she brings his and Gideon's water and coffee, he only manages to look at her long enough to mutter, "Thank you." Her hair is graying at the temples and reminds him of one of the nurses at Bennington. Unwrapping a straw is easier than trying to consider this.

"You boys find what you'd like yet?" she asks brightly. Years of smoking are evident in the timbre of her voice, but she could be doing much worse for herself. In a decade, half that maybe, she won't sound nearly so clean.

"I'd like your Reuben, please. On rye bread," Gideon replies easily, like he does this all the time, as though he isn't sitting opposite his former protege after two years of no contact whatsoever.

She repeats the order as she takes it down. From the sound of her writing, she presses hard, using excessive pressure, at least while taking orders. Heavy pressure writers seek material gratification; they are uptight and, because they feel their emotions more strongly than the average person, they can easily overreact; and they can hold grudges forever, if it comes to that. Despite this, though, or perhaps because of it, their internal lives are rich, their imaginations vivid. She probably had higher aspirations than this life, but she met her husband (trying to look up at her, Spencer only makes it to eye-level with her wedding ring), fell in love, and doesn't regret a thing. Smoking is a habit, probably something they do together. Nightly love-making and a shared cigarette after. How happy to be normal and in something reliable.

Spencer manages to look at her right as she turns her attention to him. "What about you, honey?" she asks, her smile embarrassingly sympathetic.

"I -- uh, no, I'm fine," he stumbles over his words and hates every second of it. He even has to pause, swallowing thickly and looking back to the off-white table instead of at her. "Just -- just coffee for me, thanks."

It's Gideon, not Ellen, who questions this. "You're sure, Spencer? You might not get another chance to eat before your flight."

Gideon might be hard to profile -- even Hotch hadn't predicted that the team would find him in a suburb around Olympia, Washington, of all places -- but his subtext is fairly obvious. Mom's said the same thing every time Spencer's seen her since he started at the Bureau: you're so thin, you look so scrawny, all that coffee makes you skinny. Similarly easy to read is Gideon's unspoken question: Are you really taking care of yourself? Spencer's been trying, but he supposes that his answer won't really be the resounding yes that Gideon would like.

"Yeah, I..." Spencer pauses again, making himself look up at her. "Could I get two eggs, scrambled, with the chicken soup?"

"Sure thing, sweetheart." And, with that, she's off, leaving Spencer to try and fill the silence again.

Instinctively, he takes a sip of his coffee before realizing that he forgot to put the sugar in; if he were a masochist, the bitterness would be a better mechanism for waking up than the caffeine. His entire face scrunches in concentration as he opens the sugar packets and dumps them, one-by-one, into the coffee. He mixes them in mechanically, the separate motions all too familiar. After six, he pauses to taste his concoction. It's not perfect, but it'll do just fine, and he finally forces himself to meet the gaze of the man sitting across the table from him.

The past two years have been good to Gideon, or so it looks. It's clear that he hasn't put the past behind him, though that could simply be circumstantial. His age isn't showing quite as visibly as it used to, the spark's come back behind his brown eyes (after Frank came back, Spencer was certain that it never would), and he certainly isn't overflowing with joy, but he's managed a smile, which is more than Spencer can say for himself. Gideon's hair hasn't thinned, not that Spencer can see, and any ghosts that cross his face are all too likely caused by the fact that, for the first time in twenty-four-and-a-half months, the reminder of his former life, of the BAU and what they saw, is physical and unavoidable. More than that, his reminder comes in the form of Spencer Reid -- a thinner, paler, more sleep-deprived Spencer Reid, but Spencer Reid nonetheless.

When he tries to open his mouth and speak, he can't find words or his vocal chords and his stomach lurches violently. It's the same way it would feel if he were riding shotgun while Derek played fast and loose with traffic laws. He never should have come here. He's gotten on two years without Gideon in his life, and no, it hasn't been easy, but he should have just left well enough alone. Derek would have been upset that he didn't deal with his 'Gideon issues' when he had the unexpected chance and maybe certain questions would have gone continually unanswered -- but how is that any better than what they have now? If Spencer can't bring himself to speak, it's just going to be worse than never seeing Gideon at all.

"What's on your mind, Spencer?" Gideon prods. Being faced with his smile is a staggering reality. Spencer's imagined it so many times, but he never thought that he might actually be here, sitting across a table from Gideon. He's started forgetting what it felt like before, but this, he knows, is far from his old experiences.

"I'd have a chance to eat before the flight," he says lamely, fussing with the wrapper from his straw. "I asked Hotch to stay over another night. ...So I could see you."

"How is Hotch?" He asks it in the same way that one might ask about a peculiar weather pattern. "How's everyone been?"

"Hayley left him," Spencer reports it as though it's a statistic and not his boss's personal life. "Strauss brought David Rossi in as your replacement. He's... different, but he grows on you, after a while. Garcia got shot--"

"Penelope? Are you serious?"

Spencer swallows thickly before he can get out, "As a heart attack. ...But she wasn't hurt that badly, and she actually started dating this other technical analyst, Kevin Lynch. Will -- Detective LaMontagne? From New Orleans -- anyway, he and JJ had a baby. Little Henry... they named me and Penelope his godparents..."

Gideon smiles again and Spencer can't look at him anymore. "You must be pleased."

"Yeah, I am, I guess... It's just -- I mean, it's amazing, on one hand, that Will and JJ wanted me to be the godfather. But it's so daunting, too, being responsible for something -- someone so tiny and helpless."

Idiot -- how could he slip up and call his godson a thing, even tangentially or off-handedly, like now? He might not be able to look Gideon in the eye again, at this rate. Some fauxs pas are acceptable or at least tolerable, but referring to Henry as a thing is decidedly not one of them. Continuing to fuss with the straw wrapper instead of paying attention to Gideon is only a step or two above that.

"How have you been, Spencer?"

His eyes wide and his nostrils flared, Spencer forces himself to look up at the beatific, Buddha smile Gideon gives him. It would be comforting if Spencer couldn't see the curious spark behind the other man's eyes, and if he didn't know that this question is not nearly as simple as it seems to be. The easy surfaces of things go down like his sugared coffee, but this palatable disguise is a crop of lies, just a cover trying to mask the bitter kick-back that comes when you pry far enough into things. After six years in the BAU, it's nigh impossible for Spencer to believe in Occam's Razor anymore, for him to swallow things that appear to make sense without probing them first, for him to think that Gideon's investigative concern is only that and not riddled with some subtext. Something else's presence wouldn't comfort him, he knows that much, but it would at least give him the satisfaction of being right in his caution.

Once again, he finds himself in the wretched position of having too many things to say but not enough fortitude to say them. He thinks of his first NA meeting -- "Hello, my name is Spencer, and I guess... I don't really know what I am" (Hello, Spencer) -- he thinks of his letters to Bennington on the days when he wants this all to be a dream, and he thinks of all the things he's considered saying to her, then reevaluated --

"Dear Mom, Today was surreal. Agent Gideon brought me to the BAU and I think I've officially started there now. I know everyone's names already, but it was kind of like a first day at school magnified by a power of ten. At least in school, I knew enough about how things worked to feel somewhat more comfortable."

"Dear Mom, I saved someone's life tonight. Remember from a few days ago, how I told you about Nathan Harris, the kid who stopped me at the metro station? He tried to kill himself tonight. He bought a prostitute, I guess to see if he could sleep with her without thinking of murdering her, but, instead, he sliced his wrists. She called me and Penelope helped me save his life. He's going into a juvenile mental facility now, and I just hope that they can help him."

Spencer thinks of everything but the man sitting across the table from him.

Finally, he looks up. He makes himself look Gideon in the eye and, in a voice he hates hearing himself use, he manages to get out, "I've been better."

As though the silence hadn't said that for him.

~*~

As young as four, Spencer knows that he isn't normal, but he isn't sure he minds. He plays chess in the park with adults, some of them more than ten times his age, and he always wins. He remembers facts and figures that dazzle his age-appropriate playmates, whom he rarely ever actually plays with; it isn't that they've done anything to make him dislike them -- it's just that, when they aren't dull, they make no sense to him. He knows what the words on the sides of the cereal boxes mean. Whole grain oats are the main ingredient in Cheerios, but sugar is the main ingredient in Count Chocula, followed by the marshmallows, which have too many unnatural or modified things in them for them to be healthy. Changing something natural just seems ridiculous to him, but he likes the way his fake-chocolate cereal tastes.

He likes mixing his cereal with his parents' Cheerios. The two textures come together quite nicely and the tastes complement each other, Spencer thinks. Dad doesn't understand why Spencer won't just enjoy his Count Chocula like the other boys. Mom says he isn't like the other boys, he's better than they are, he's gifted, and they fight about Dad forcing him into baseball again while the cool milk and saliva wear down the cereal in his mouth.

When there's no more cereal, Mom and Dad are still arguing. Spencer quietly drinks the milk from the bowl and then wanders across the check-patterned linoleum floor to put his bowl in the sink. Neither of them notice as he steals into Mom's office and tries to find something to read.

He likes Chaucer better when Mom reads it to him.

By the time he's ten, Spencer wishes his life were more normal. He's starting high school soon -- maybe this fall, maybe not, it depends on what happens when some teachers talk to some other teachers, then those teachers talk to the school board, and then Mom talks to everyone, and it's all too much talking for Spencer to comprehend. The whole house still feels different with Dad gone, even though he's been gone for three months, two weeks, five days, two hours, and thirteen minutes.

Sitting at the table with a Lunchable, Spencer wonders which school registration he'll have to go to, and whether or not Mom will be lucid enough to take him. Dad took him last year and Dad explained that, yes, it was odd for a nine-year-old to be signed up where he was, but everyone understood what was happening. Drumming his fingers on the airtight plastic cover, he isn't even sure if Mom will be able to make it this year. What if she's having an episode because she doesn't take her medication? What if he has to go alone? The high school isn't far, he's walked there and back with Jeff and Ethan several times (Ethan has longer legs, so he walks faster, something he's never shy about saying) -- but what if Spencer has to try and explain to the PTA moms running things that his name is Spencer Reid and he really is supposed to be here, that he's neither lost nor confused, and that he only came alone because his mother is crazy and his father's gone? What if he tries to get a teacher to help -- Mister Leventhal, the biology teacher, is an old friend of Mom's; his wife teaches at the university too and they know the situation, as the adults tend to call it -- but the PTA moms still don't believe him?

Spencer looks at the tightly packaged assemblage of well-preserved meat, white flour crackers, and pasteurized cheese food as though it all contains some kind of answer. He knows what goes into Lunchables, and the articles he's read all scare him. They scare him more than trying to find an answer for the new, fighteningly thin, spindle-necked research librarian at Mom's university, who had to interrupt his searching by asking if he needed more age-appropriate literature. Clearly, she had to be new. Spencer didn't remember her face or the way her glasses hung on the silver chain around her neck, and she didn't know yet that schizophrenic Professor Reid's son was above reading Little Women, or some picture book Tom Sawyer, or whatever other simple-minded children's books they kept around for faculty kids.

Even though it scares him, Spencer knows he needs to eat something and trying to cook scares him even more than what goes into Lunchables. He can manage it and he's getting better, but he wishes Dad were still here to do it. He wishes Dad were still here to talk to those people because, when Dad talks, people listen.

Instead of plucking up the courage to eat this so-called food, Spencer leaves it on the table and walks down the hallway towards Mom's room. He doesn't knock before opening the door. There isn't any point to niceties when the only people in the house are the two of them and her delusions. Mom's still in bed, wearing her nightgown and her sweater -- the same one she wore when Dad walked out, the same one she'll be wearing several years later, when her dutiful, her brilliant son finally turns on her -- and surrounded by her books. She sleeps with them instead of with Dad anymore.

Although her eyes are distant now, their vivid spark replaced with that alien expression she has during these difficult times, but she still looks at him and she smiles. "Spencer..." she says as though she's remembering some long-lost friend. She reaches out towards him with both arms. "Come here, baby."

Without questioning, he comes to the bed and climbs in beside her. He can shut the world out when he's here with Mom and her books and her wild mass of untamed hair. Shushing him even though he's made no noise, she takes him in her arms and he clings to her, nestling his head in her neck and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. They aren't so strange when Spencer pretends that there are no other people, no other standards to which to compare them.

He only speaks when she asks him what he'd like to hear: "Could you read Chaucer?" he asks, hoping she won't point out how many times she's read it to him. "Please?"

Stroking his hair, she places a delicate kiss on his forehead. "For you, baby -- anything." The book isn't even on the bed when she starts; she recites the poem from memory: "The life so short, the craft so long to learn / Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquering / The dreadful joy alwey that slit so yearn / All this mean I by love..."

Children from two-parent households, on average, receive three more years of higher education than children from single-parent household. What effect, Spencer wonders, does having a schizophrenic professor of fifteenth-century English literature for a mother have on that statistic? Are his years at university going to be measured in some dark little room, by some beady-eyed little keeper of large numbers, based only on their most simple values, or will it be considered that he had two Bachelor's degrees at sixteen, three Doctorates at twenty, and most of a third Bachelor's under his belt despite the onslaught of working in the BAU, becoming an addict, and always wondering if, some day, Diana Reid won't be the only schizophrenic in the family?

Several years from now, Spencer is twenty-six and he has sex with Derek Morgan for the first time, on the sofa in his underfurnished home (he doesn't even have a TV, one of the first things Derek noted upon entering). They've just gotten back from Colorado. This case was hard -- which doesn't say much of anything, because, in one way or another, all their cases are difficult.

This one, though -- it was harder than the average case. It wasn't being taken hostage. Spencer's been someone's hostage more times than he likes, and, comparatively speaking, this time wasn't so bad. Some times, like in Texas with Elle and Doctor Bryar, work out better than others; in the other times, he ends up drugged on Dilaudid, staring up the barrel of a gun, and muttering Biblical codes for a webcam audience, hoping Hotch will see the tacit meaning. At least this time he wasn't arguing with a delusional physicist or trying not to cry, lest it bring out Charles or Raphael. It wasn't even watching Cyrus beat the Devil out of Emily -- that turn of phrase, Spencer thinks, is proof that Tobias hasn't ever left him -- though Spencer certainly didn't need the extra guilt.

The real reason is something Gideon said just two days before Tobias: "I'm tired of people perverting religion to justify the terrible things they do." All he thought about, whenever Cyrus quoted scripture, was Gideon's face when, under the filtered daylight in the Kyles' home, he made that confession. When Cyrus and his men left him alone long enough, Spencer tried to think of what Gideon would have told him, only to find that his memories of Gideon's voice were distorted. Try as he might, he couldn't get them to sound right. Had he slowly been losing his recollection of that sound, or was it all too new?

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because, now, without intending to, he's kissing Derek Morgan and he isn't sure which one of them started it. He likes it for its vagueness, though, and, as odd and alien as it is, he likes the gentle, impenetrable motion of his and Derek's tongues against each other. Gently, Derek coaxes him onto his back and eases off all their clothes, telling Spencer to just relax, to stop thinking about it so much and just enjoy himself. Compared to its promise and its foreplay, the sex is messy, and painful -- Derek tries his best to make it go smoothly, but the fact of the matter is that Spencer hasn't had it at all since his days as an undergrad, and, at that, all of Spencer's goes at it had been unsatisfying and with girls. He's never been penetrated.

His eighteenth birthday -- he knows full well that, come this weekend or the next one, he's going to put his legal seniority to work and act in Mom's best interests, but his friends refuse to let him think about that or about his work for his dissertation. There's a party one of their friends is having, ten miles away in a modest middle-class house. They make Spencer go with the promise that he'll have fun, they get him drunk despite the law by making him drink every time he says something academic. Inevitability is the name of the game. Even though he tries to kill his tendencies, he can't. He always slips up into statistics or something else. Sometime around one AM, they shove him at a girl whose name he doesn't know -- "Melody," she tells him right before pulling him into someone's mother's bedroom.

During the last few months of his work on his final Doctorate, he's tutoring an undergrad in Chemistry. Her name is Alissa and she has the brightest, ginger-colored hair he's ever seen in his life. She's constantly in awe of the fact that he isn't that much older than her at all (he's just nineteen; everyone's in awe of him). Without his full awareness, she turns a few of their tutoring sessions into dates and then kisses him behind the stacks of art history texts in the back of the library. They have sex right there, and then a few times after, and, when he's finished with his Doctorate, they split up with no hard feelings. He follows Gideon to Quantico and he never calls her again. He never even properly asked her out.

After the Redskins game with JJ, for the first time in five years, Spencer goes home with someone. For the first time ever in his expansive memory, he goes home with a woman. Melody and Alissa were girls, but JJ is a woman. She carries herself differently, with more confidence and self-respect, and Spencer is in awe of how she can be so young in the BAU and not be some kind of nervous wreck the way he thinks he is. She doesn't keep beer at her place, like Melody and Alissa would have, but breaks out a bottle of wine that doesn't notably intoxicate and makes their kisses taste funny.

Neither of the first two were personal or intimate, which being with Morgan -- with Derek seems to be inherently. They knew his neuroses, and Ellen even came to know his hang-ups about where he did and didn't feel comfortable having sex, but they didn't know him the way that Derek does. JJ knew him, but not in a way he likes. The way she knew him was vulnerable and nigh incompetent, and she seemed to sympathize, even stroked his hair and told him it was fine, but he made himself feel sick with failure. She doesn't say it, but she probably hadn't expected much to begin with, a fact that, oddly enough, isn't comforting at all. They never talk about the date with anyone.

Derek doesn't make Spencer feel so ridiculous. In contrast, actually, being with him feels so inexplicably right. For the first time since he stopped laying in bed, letting Mom read to him, Spencer finds his face at home in the crook of someone's neck. The way his and Derek's limbs fall together feels natural, a long time coming.

When she's in her right mind, Mom keeps peonies in a vase in the window. Halfway through her recitation of the Chaucer, she catches Spencer looking at them and explains, in a voice and speech he's heard before, that peonies have a more understated beauty to them than roses that often gets overlooked in favor of the garish. People are, as a whole, losing touch with the fine art of subtlety, she tells him. Besides that, peonies are symbols of intelligence. Just under fourteen years from now, he brings a bouquet of peonies to meet JJ at the game, something that takes her by surprise. Seven months from then, he sends a bunch to Elle while she's in the hospital, too terrified by what he might see if he were to visit.

Shortly after the one-year mark from there (a month over, to be precise), Elle isn't in the BAU anymore and, on an ugly Monday morning, Spencer brings a bouquet of pink peonies to her replacement, Emily Prentiss. He spent the long weekend in withdrawal and he still isn't entirely right, but she deserves an apology for how he acted in Houston, so she gets the flowers and an earnest, "I'm sorry for treating you so terribly." He forces himself to make eye contact with her.

Penelope pulls him off to the side and asks what's up with him and peonies. He shrugs and lies and says he just likes them.

He's only ten and he knows without question that something is wrong with his mother and their relationship. He shouldn't be the one taking care of her. Her strongest moments of motherhood shouldn't be reading Valentine's poems to him. Nine years later, he's playing chess in one of the student spaces after going to a recruitment lecture from the FBI. No one beats him until Agent Gideon, the pleasant, smiling man from the talk, sits down and asks if he can have a game. Smirking isn't something Spencer does quite often, but his face twists into one now. Never mind that Gideon is an FBI profiler, Spencer's been trouncing so-called 'superior' intellects for sixteen years now, practically since he learned the game.

Two hours later, and he's lost all eight games. He stares at the board, confused, trying to trace how, exactly, he's been beaten and, before he knows it, Gideon's taking him to an off-campus diner for dinner together.

Over sandwiches and coffee, after talking to Spencer in a way that no one has before, he asks, "How soon can you be done with your degree, Doctor Reid?"

"What -- the Chemistry Doctorate?" Spencer fumbles his words at this title. Even though it's his proper one, he hasn't heard it since being awarded the Mathematics Doctorate. "The work is almost done, really -- I'll have everything finished and the loose ends tied by the end of the month. ...Why?"

Gideon smiles and nods. "We could really use a mind like yours in the BAU."

Something about the way he says it leaves Spencer unable to refuse. Everything about Gideon reminds Spencer of the father he thinks he never had, and won't acknowledge having until several years later, when the loss of his surrogate father prompts Emily to breach the BAU rule about agents not profiling each other.

~*~

"Is that it?" Gideon asks, as though Spencer's just told him a joke with a let-down of a punchline. "Just that... you've been better?"

Their waitress walks by and Spencer almost considers ordering a strawberry milkshake, just to remind Gideon of Frank and spite him for acting like this is so easy. But that, he decides, would be far too cruel and Spencer's only use for her becomes having his coffee refilled.

As he continues his decimation of the sugar packets, he says again, "I've been better."

Gideon sits back in the booth and Spencer's expecting everything but what he hears: "Talk to me about it."


	2. Chapter 2

Being looked at is always uncomfortable, but it's not as though there's much else for Gideon to see here. Granted, Spencer only knows this because eye contact is difficult for him, but that doesn't make it any less true. He doesn't want to think about what Gideon must see in him. Most obviously, Spencer hasn't slept well. It's not just the usual trough in energy, the crash and the insomnia that always follow finishing a case; he just hasn't slept well generally. All he's eaten the past few days has been under someone's supervision because he's felt impending nausea for the past two weeks. Not even Hotch and Derek know about it -- what's the point in raising alarms over something psychosomatic? It's just easier to pretend, to lie. At least his arms are free of track marks, which is something, Spencer guesses.

Talking, though, is easily just as uncomfortable as being observed -- at least, it is under the circumstances. He looks at Gideon as though he just suggested riding down the main thoroughfare on a flaming unicycle and juggling lobsters.

"This unsub was difficult," he acquiesces, figuring Gideon deserves to hear something. He holds his coffee mug with both hands, presses his thumbs on the white ceramic. "He -- he was abducting teenage boys from shopping centers and torturing them, but then... they all died of drug overdoses. Heroin."

For the most part, it's the newspaper by-line version of the story, something that Gideon knows and that his face registers. His brow furrows and he frowns -- Spencer's seen that face before. "Without a gun, I look like a teacher's assistant." "Come on, you're not worried about how you look." The weight of the pistol on his hip reasserts itself against his thigh and Spencer's spine stiffens with the knowledge that Gideon sees right through him, the same way it does for Mom. He's heard so more times than he can count: "You're not that difficult to profile."

"Come on, Spencer," Gideon says. His hands are doing something, but Spencer pays no attention to them. Forcing himself to look Gideon in the eye is for his own good. "You haven't changed so much that I can't tell when something's bothering you."

"It's not something," Spencer ruefully corrects him. "It's not everything either, but -- it's a lot of things."

"The heroin?"

He really is an open book, then, and, by way of agreeing, he gives Gideon a small nod and takes a long drink from his mug. The honesty of the situation makes him wince. Or maybe that's the fluorescent lights. There's a clatter as one of the old men knocks his drink over. One of the kids gets a bloody nose for no apparent reason -- There's no apparent reason for the other man's rhetoric. "I'm not interested in the arguments of men." It's not an argument; it's just fact; Spencer can't read minds, he hardly picks up social signals properly sometimes. He only studies human behavior.

Studied human behavior? Should it be past tense? The past several hours have involved him studying Tobias Hankel's dissociative identities and his own conflicted feelings about the opioid analgesic he's being given.

By the third time, he doesn't mind so much. He always wanted an opportunity to turn his brain off for a while...

Staring at his coffee shouldn't bring so many things to mind -- Tobias, the track marks on these victims' arms, Derek trying to talk to him, Derek calling him on his lies, Derek being more reasonable than he expected, JJ being delicate with him, JJ looking out for him, JJ overcompensating, Hotch understanding then looking all too worried as the weeks went on, Gideon being everything no one else could be and then being gone... His hands are shaking as he takes a drink. They don't need to be shaking, so why are they? He's already obvious enough.

"I've been -- I've stayed clean," he says quietly. Even with two-and-a-half years of sobriety and successfully talking to other people -- strangers, at that -- under his belt, Spencer just can't talk about this normally. The greatest courtesy Derek, JJ, and the team do is acting like this doesn't exist unless there's good reason to acknowledge it. Gideon used to do that too. "I started going to -- to group meetings, Narcotics Anonymous for law-enforcement, which isn't easy, but..."

It's harder when he's been infected with Nicholls-Brown anthrax and he's quickly dying. Locating words can be difficult enough without them coming out as gibberish and the freezing, sterile medical is lacks all comfort. Which is more uncomfortable? Dying here, with Kimura and the EMTs, hoping that his profile of Nicholls was correct -- or dying in a dirty chair, on a filthy floor, handcuffed, beaten, and coming down from being drugged? The latter has an upshot, at least: Spencer made it through that.

Now, the last words he'll leave are unintelligible and the last meaningful ones were pushing Derek away. It was worth it -- being hosed down isn't supposed to be sexual, but if Derek were to see him naked, there's only one way he'd want it to go. He wouldn't be able to have it, either, or he'd risk exposing Derek too. Before those words, the important ones were figuring out Chad Brown; the lasting ones were snapping at Kimura when she was just trying to help.

His lingering words will be that he loves his mother, embedded in a computer file he suspects Garcia might never delete; what he remembers as he dies is that he refused all narcotics. Every cough hits him deeper, moving further into his lungs in jerky progression. His back and abdominal muscles ache with the constant tensing and relaxing. His chest burns -- or is it stabs? Which of the twenty adjectives for pain would best describe this?

Is it backsliding to accept the morphine? Could he abuse it in a hospital setting, with Kimura and the staff monitoring him? Would he need to admit to it at NA? Would he need to start counting his days sober from square-one? Would Derek be upset with him? What would he do when he inevitably got cut off? What would he do to postpone that inevitability? Are any of these answers worth the risks he'd take to find them out?

"But none of it's easy," he concludes. As he looks up at Gideon, he can feel his voice trying to break, his eyes threatening to tear up. "Ever, it's... Of everything I've ever tried to do... I mean, you'd think it would get to be less difficult, some of the people at the meetings... they make it look so effortless. But it's a struggle. I just -- it never gets to that point, not... not for me."

Spencer hates that his body is working so hard to betray him. Is it so much to think he could just play this cool? He should be stronger than this, which he knows is a dangerous line of thinking, but he didn't come here to guilt Gideon into coming back to the BAU, not when he's doing so much better now.

"You're being too hard on yourself, Spencer. No one could expect it to be easy for you, not after what you went through." The old Gideon advisory tone -- how is Spencer supposed to feel about this? It's what he wanted, isn't it? But something's still not right.

"Sometimes it's easier, though," Spencer amends himself abruptly, tonguing his lips as he tries to find the right words. "Sometimes... I don't know. When I'm with Henry, or with Derek, it's like... like having a physical presence attached to why I'm staying clean... it sort of creates this shield, I guess? Then a case like this happens and I feel so..."

"Exposed?"

Spencer nods again at this suggestion and averts his eyes. Why couldn't this place have wooden tables? This plastic one has its imperfections, the places where things have been dropped or where children have pointlessly stabbed forks into the surface, but, overwhelmingly, it's quite boring. He doesn't need more reminders of how he ought to be looking at Gideon.

"How have you been sleeping?"

He doesn't look at Gideon to make this point; 'How do you think I've been sleeping' is better conveyed by not meeting his eyes, by rolling his shoulders and swallowing thickly, by pointedly looking somewhere else. Is it petulant? Adolescent? Yes, most likely, but Gideon asked a stupid question. Anyone can see how Spencer's been sleeping without being a former member of the BAU, so why should brilliant Jason Gideon, profiler extraordinaire, extoller of the virtues of empathy, who famously denounced guns as unnecessary, need to ask?

Spencer's resolve to keep this position crumbles when Gideon reaches out and touches his hand.

"Please don't make me profile you, Spencer."

~*~

For as long as he can remember dreaming, Spencer has had nightmares. He's known for just as long that this doesn't make him significant; everyone has nightmares. Some people have them more often than he does, which is horrifying. Sometimes, the nights aren't all that bad. Night terrors -- it could be worse. They wake him up with little detail or pretension, just gut-wrenching, pound-in-your-chest fear with an aftertaste that rings like vertigo. The nightmares, though, are more drawn out and never quite so simple.

This time, he's alone with his gun and a lonely corridor yawns out before him, its countless doors unopened and Spencer doesn't even try to change that; all he knows is that he wants to get out, but the exit sign never gets closer. Somewhere in the building, there's an unsub, but there isn't any way that Spencer can take him down alone. Where's Hotch? Derek? How did he get separated from them? Somewhere else, someone is crying -- the high-pitched wailing has to be Henry's and Spencer just runs harder -- Will, JJ, and Garcia are nowhere to be seen, so he needs to save his godson -- what is Henry even doing here? Why would JJ have her baby where she knows an unsub is?

What's the unsub's MO? Why can't Spencer remember it? Why can't he remember anything about this place or why he's here?

Finally, the screaming gets to be too loud and Spencer throws himself at a door, hoping it will open. It doesn't, and he tries the one directly opposite. This one opens, but not to something Spencer likes -- he charges in, pistol up, checking all the corners instinctively, and the scene makes him lower his arms. He recognizes Henry immediately, but the person holding him is someone Spencer hasn't seen in ages. He's small and slight, easily as thin as Spencer (or thinner), with tufts of curly black hair and a far-gone look of desperation, a bloody knife in his free hand...

"Nathan..." But, wait, that makes no sense -- nothing about this adds up right. Nathan's prospective victims were all prostitutes, not babies -- but Henry's fine; he's screaming, but he isn't bleeding -- there isn't anything that fits.

"I had to kill them, Doctor Reid," he says softly, in his stark, consistently apologetic voice. Is that really desperation on his face, or is it shell-shock? "I found your godson, and they were coming at us -- they were going to kill him, and I, I couldn't let them..."

"Nathan, who are 'they'?"

Nathan gestures around the room with his knife, keeping a firm hand on it and leaving Henry quite alone; it's good that he's holding Henry now, because Spencer thinks he might need to vomit. Bodies -- there are bodies everywhere. Where did they come from? Have they always been there? How did Spencer miss these corpses? Stumbling, dazed by this revelation, he nearly falls on his face, only to see that he almost tripped over Benjamin Cyrus, which is the only reason why he notices who the dead among them are: the villains, the bad guys, the former unsubs. Next to Cyrus is Randall Garner, his dead fingers cleaving to a copy of Le Morte d'Arthur. Owen Savage, Jonny McHale, and Cory Bridges were all too young to die, regardless of what they did, and Philip Dowd is entirely unthreatening without a gun. Is that Adam or Amanda whose hair Spencer steps on? Amber Canardo's eyes are still open; they're even more unsettling now. Vincent's glasses are broken, completely shattered. Portly, white-haired Henry Grace died holding his pendant of phi in his hand; Frank and Jane held each other's hands.

...Why would Nathan kill Jane? She was always prone to raving, of course -- she could talk as fast as Spencer, but only half of it made sense, if it was intelligible at all. She could have been perceived as a threat, but surely he could've seen that he didn't need to hurt her. For all she loved Frank, or thought she did, she was an innocent...

So was Doctor Bryar, but Spencer actually does trip over his body, too caught up in wondering after the logic of this situation. Why is Nathan the one killing people? Even so long after working his case, Spencer's had hope for him, hope that he'll be able to realize he's stronger than his own mind, hope that, even if he can't be normal, he'll be functional, happy.

Suddenly, Nathan drops the knife and Spencer feels something cold and metallic against his chest. Trying not to succumb to his frantic urges, Spencer grabs at it -- why is he wearing Grace's pendant? When did he get a copy of Empty Planet? Did he walk in carrying it?

"I had to kill them, Doctor Reid," Nathan says again, holding Henry to his chest with both hands. "They wanted to hurt your godson."

"Wait -- but... how did you -- how did you know that Henry's my godson?"

Nathan looks surprised by this question. "Raphael told me."

Raphael... Spencer swallows thickly and motions for Nathan to hand Henry to him. Once he's holding his godson comfortably in one arm, he grabs one of Nathan's hands and pulls the boy back into the corridor, running for all of their sakes. As before, the exit sign gets no closer, even though Spencer pushes himself harder. Lactic acid production increases when the body's demand for energy is high and it does so to the point that there's too much lactate and it can't be processed quickly enough -- but the acidosis people think of is actually caused by a drop in pH related to the production of hydrogen in the anaerobic hydrolysis of ATP -- and, either way, it doesn't matter.

Finally, the exit sign gets closer and Spencer makes the mistake of thinking they'll get out: before them, the floor splits open like it's in an earthquake; they have to scramble just to get a hold on something. Unfettered by the presence of a baby, Nathan pulls himself up quickly and gets away, but Spencer has to fight to keep his one hand from slipping. And it is a fight -- Henry's suddenly so heavy. How can one baby be so heavy? Spencer's sure he can't hold on much longer...

But right as his faith fails him, someone's gentle hands reach down and take Henry. He doesn't scream, so it must be someone good -- maybe it's JJ, or Derek -- but it isn't who Spencer expects in the least. Instead of anyone who would fit the situation, Spencer looks up into the lined, placid of Jason Gideon.

But Gideon left the Bureau, left Virginia entirely for God knows where -- why would he be where they know the unsub is?

Does it matter? No, or at least not much -- desperate, Spencer holds his now free hand out, shouting, "Gideon, help me!"

Gideon's expression doesn't change, he only tilts his head to show he's listening.

"Gideon! Help -- I can't hold on much longer."

More unresponsiveness.

"Save me! Please!"

As Spencer watches his former mentor turn and walk away, he feels as though a lead brick has been dropped in his stomach -- and even though Gideon's leaving, Spencer still cries out for him.

"Please help me -- Gideon, help me -- Gideon -- Gideon!"

"Spencer!"

At the calling of his name, his handhold crumbles away and he falls into the black abyss.

With a thud, he wakes up on JJ's floor, at the foot of her couch, and to the sight of Derek's panicked face. He knows dreams are infamous for their inability to make any sense at all, but this is a break even from dream logic. His heart is racing and his breathing rushed, but his mind is slower than he can recall it being without some form of chemical assistance. As Derek helps him back onto the sofa, all he can think is that the colors all look wrong. They weren't so muted in the rest of his dream.

JJ and Garcia show up next, JJ in a modest nightgown and Garcia in pajamas with some print of cartoon cats. This makes no sense either; they both look exhausted and confused, and Spencer's sure that his subconscious would be nicer to them. He's also sure that it would make this entire scene less awkward and less silent. Surely, as a part of his mind, it has to know how much he dislikes tension.

Garcia's the first one to try and say anything: "Boys, as much as I am a proponent of sexual healing... it is three in the morning, I had a long day yesterday, and JJ's, I'm sure, was not much better--"

What she's implying hits Spencer too late and, rather than handle it gracefully, he snaps, "We weren't having sex!"

He must do so too loudly, because soon Henry's screaming fills the house -- it isn't until Spencer hears this that he even considers that he might be awake. Sighing loudly, Garcia turns and shuffles off down the hall to the infant's room. Although JJ is still visibly exhausted -- and how can she not be, with Will in the hospital, a son to take care of, and two profilers and a technical analyst temporarily living under her roof? -- she joins Spencer on the sofa, taking the space on one side while Derek takes the other.

"Spence?" she asks tentatively, yawning and still half-asleep. "What happened out here?"

For a moment, Spencer just looks at her, but he finally manages to explain, "I -- I was dreaming."

"That's not all you were doing, pretty boy," Derek corrects him, running a hand down the back of Spencer's head. "You were having a nightmare -- you started screaming about Gideon--"

"Gideon?" JJ interjects. Spencer can't begrudge her the incredulous tone: it wasn't a secret how much Gideon meant to him, but it has, quite legitimately, been ages since anyone's brought Gideon up. She briefly glances at Derek and, when he can't explain it, she looks back to Spencer and prompts him, "Spence... it's okay to talk about it. What happened with Gideon?"

"Not much at all, really," Spencer answers honestly, furrowing his brow as he forces himself to remember everything. "He -- I was in this warehouse, looking for an unsub, but I found Nathan Harris, you know, from -- from the Capitol Hill case, instead. He was in this room full of old unsubs, but they were all dead, he'd -- they'd been trying to attack him and Henry, so Nathan--"

"Henry?" JJ interrupts someone again, and with good reason, given that Spencer's talking about her son. "You had another dream with Henry--"

"At a crime scene or similar," Spencer finishes for her, nodding by way of saying yes. "But... Nathan kept the two of them safe. And... Cyrus was there, and Henry Grace, Frank and Jane, Vincent, Jonny McHale, Randall Garner, and... so many others -- and then I tripped over Doctor Bryar, and Nathan mentioned Raphael, so -- so I took Henry from him and the three of us ran for it. And we were almost up when the floor split -- Nathan got away. I thought I'd fall, but... but Gideon saved Henry. And I put my hand out, to get him to pull me up, but..." He swallows thickly as he trails off.

"But...?" Derek says firmly.

Spencer finishes his story softly, pointedly avoiding eye contact with either of his companions: "But he just left me there."

Of course, realistically, Derek and JJ are going to be worried about him, and he knows it could be worse. JJ's soft fingers could leave his hair to dangle in his face. She could have stayed in bed, rather than get up. Not all mothers do that for their children -- Spencer never says this to her, because he never sees reason to question her dedication to raising Henry properly and because there isn't any point in projecting his own experiences onto his godson's. JJ is not Diana Reid, who in turn is not JJ, and even going into complex metaphysics, the only ways to make the two entities one are complex, theoretical, and unrealistic. The similarities between them stop at intelligence and the color of their hair.

Likewise, Derek could ignore this. He wouldn't, but he has the capability. If he were anyone else, he wouldn't find it difficult to just roll over and let Spencer endure his nightmare alone. Staying with JJ means that they sleep apart anyway -- she doesn't want to wake up to them having sex on her sofa and Will's much less fond of the idea. Even if he's in the hospital still, this is as much his place as JJ's; his opinion counts for more than Spencer's or Derek's.

Derek could do many things he doesn't do. Most prominently, right now, he could keep his hard, soft hands to himself. He could skip running his fingers down Spencer's arm for leaving Spencer to his own. Tobias's hands are surprisingly soft, his touch delicate, even as he checks Spencer's arm for a promising vein. It even takes Spencer by surprise when Charles comes out and yanks on him so harshly -- Expecting Derek to leave him alone is something Spencer doesn't do, from a practical standpoint; he just still hasn't grown accustomed to the notion that some people will try to take care of him. Derek and Garcia shoving him right into bed after this last case was surprising, even if he had been legitimately exhausted.

It's just ludicrous, though. If Derek and JJ were any sort of reasonable, they wouldn't be worrying about him. Henry is the immediate source of anxiety -- he's growing more every day; he needs his rest of his development is probably going to suffer; being jarred from that by his screaming godfather isn't good for him. Even if he'll never remember this -- or very likely won't, at least -- the experience could scar him, especially if it happens any more while Spencer's still here. He could develop an aversion to loud noises, agoraphobia -- his crying is consistently answered with love, but unconscious memories of the source of the pain could damage him in too many ways to consider.

Henry could develop any number of neuroses because his godfather doesn't sleep well. And if they won't worry about that, then there's Will. He's out of danger and his condition got moved down from critical last night, but taking a bullet that close to the heart and lungs can't ever be simple. Nightmares, on the other hand, don't hurt anyone. They upset Spencer's ability to sleep properly, but so many things have done that for so long. If it's not nightmares, it's work, it's cravings, it's Dilaudid and overthinking it, it's taking care of a schizophrenic mother -- if he couldn't handle himself, he would have let the nightmares beat him long ago.

"Babies cry, Spence," JJ informs him, catching him staring over at Garcia as she comforts Henry with cooing and cuddles. They've had this talk before. Spencer's only now getting better at not losing his cool completely when the baby starts crying. "If it weren't you waking him up, it would've been something else."

"I know, I know," he acquiesces. "I'm just... I hate being the one thing tonight."

"JJ," Derek interjects, taking Spencer's hand without any warning. "Can I sleep with him tonight? You know, considering everything."

Spencer's eyes double in size when she says, "Of course you can."

"Just keep it PG-13, loverboys," Garcia teases through a yawn, able to talk now that Henry's asleep in her arms. "Because as much as I enjoy the footage from your webcam, the last thing baby Henry needs to see in the morning is his godfather's cute little naked butt. It'll encourage the eventual clothing removal phase."

Spencer furrows his brow. "...What webcam?"

Garcia smirks. "Why the one I put in your bedroom, Boy Wonder. Didn't Captain Chocolate Sex tell you about it before he rocked your world a few nights ago? Really, the superhero roleplay was a nice touch. The folks who flock to Garcia's Boys-dot-com adored it."

Spencer starts to point out, "Garcia, we've never done superhero roleplay" -- but, instead, finds himself cut off from two sources: JJ explaining, "She was kidding, Spence" and Derek kissing him on the mouth.

After the new round of goodnights from JJ and Garcia, Spencer finds himself entangled in Derek on the sofa -- clothes on, so no one gets upset or traumatized, but clinging anyway. Whether or not he sleeps again tonight matters very little; he has Derek's warm body against his, Derek's hands brushing down his hair and cheek, and Derek's neck, in which he hides his head. Derek's feet brush lightly against his ankles as Spencer intertwines their legs; he always forgets that he's the taller one.

"Pretty boy..." Derek starts.

Spencer quickly cuts him off: "I don't want to talk about it."

Derek's voice grows firmer, loses a little bit of the warmth -- hardly any, but enough that Spencer notices. "I know you don't, but I do." He pauses, lifting Spencer's chin up and forcing eye contact, then prods, "This isn't the first time you've dreamt about Gideon, is it?"

Spencer doesn't need to ask how Derek knows this. Despite the team rules about not profiling each other, and despite their personal rule that amounts to the same, Spencer knows he can be an open book. He's even worse when he doesn't have his wits about him -- Gideon always said it. He's not that hard to profile.

Since there's no point at all in lying, Spencer whispers, "No. He's -- they were at their worst right after he left, and then they sort of... stopped coming that frequently. They picked up again around the first anniversary, and -- and with the second one coming... I guess I just didn't think that much of it."

So much so that he didn't even tell Derek, and how Derek feels about that is spelled out in how he frowns. Spencer adds on softly, "I'm sorry."

"Spencer, you know you can trust me, right?" This is too familiar territory and, even after Spencer nods, Derek continues: "I'm not gonna run to Hotch because you've been having nightmares about Gideon--"

"I know you're not, and Hotch would have to understand and--"

"That doesn't mean I'm not worried," Derek interrupts, putting a finger over Spencer's lips. "This hasn't gotten in the way of your ability to function yet, but you and I both know that it has the ability to do that. And I don't know about you, but I don't want it to get that far--"

Spencer wriggles out from under his partner's finger and snaps, "I've been -- I've lived like this for years, Derek; I'm not gonna become a danger to the team because I'm having nightmares--" He hates how annoyed he sounds, but it can't be helped.

"I'm not talking about you being a danger to the team, pretty boy." The gentleness in Derek's voice is unexpected, though Spencer knows it shouldn't be. "I don't want these Gideon issues eating you from the inside."

Gideon issues. It's an accurate little set of words, but that doesn't make it any easier to digest. Spencer doesn't want to think of the implications.

"Hey, genius," he says gently. "What's the name of that mountain region in Pennsylvania? The one I'm taking you to relax in next time we get a break from work?"

And they say there's no such thing as a stupid question. "What're you talking about?"

Grinning broadly, Derek sing-songs, "Poconos." Delicately, and emphasizing the homonym-cum-punchline, he pokes Spencer's nose.

Spencer can't help but laugh; trying not to wake the house again, he buries his mouth in Derek's shoulder until he thinks he's okay again. "That's so -- did Garcia teach you that?" he whispers, further snickers threatening to come out and ruin all the work he did in getting composed.

"You bet that big, sexy brain of yours she did. Now, if I ask nicely do I get a goodnight kiss?"

For a moment, Spencer looks up into Derek's smile, his twinkling eyes, and pretends to give this proposal a fair amount of consideration. Soon, though, his façade falls away and he gives Derek a slow, tender kiss. He can't make any promises when Derek strokes his hair and asks if there will be more nightmares tonight, but he nods anyway and nestles comfortably against the other man. Home is just a construct, an idea that, as he learned early, both from Diana Reid's conduct and her lesson plans, can mean a great many things to different people -- but, as far as Spencer's concerned, JJ's sofa is home enough if he can fall asleep in Derek's arms.

~*~

"So, you and Morgan are together, then?" Gideon's smile is genial, pleased, as though he saw this coming and is just so proud to see it a reality. For all Spencer knows, he just might have. He picked up on Spencer's misguided crush on JJ easily enough, after all. "I like him for you, Spencer, I really do..."

Gideon goes on in a similar manner, and as he drains his second round of coffee, Spencer wishes he'd brought Derek with him for this meeting, but he knows he had the best intentions in telling his partner to go out with Emily and Garcia instead. Having Derek would make him feel more comfortable, but it would be too much like why he kept going back to the Dilaudid. Weakness, nausea, lethargy, withdrawal -- none of it mattered, because he didn't need to think when he was high. His problems didn't go away, but they seemed less painful.

It would just be the same if Derek were here right now. The awkwardness would still exist, but Spencer would feel all too content to ignore everything he's wanted to say to Gideon and just turn this into an extended catch-up session. Two old friends swapping stories and nothing more. Already, they're going too far in that direction and Spencer can hear Emily castigating him all over again.

Inherently, though, it can't be that and Spencer knows that as he meets Gideon's eyes and says clearly, even though he feels his voice betraying him: "I've really missed you."


	3. Chapter 3

Finally, Gideon didn't see something coming from Spencer's corner. The honesty catches him off guard and silence settles between them once again, the duration of which Spencer remains fixed on his former mentor. He does look good, that's undeniable. From the last time they saw each other until now, something's happened to make him look happier -- his laugh lines are more prominent now, Sarah's murder isn't carved into every crevice -- but it gives him an alien look as well. Is this man really Jason Gideon? He has the same name, the same voice and face, and he carries himself too similarly not to be; he has an easier time reading Spencer than everyone else and he knows the things he can say to make Spencer tic -- but Gideon, as Spencer knew him, wasn't Jason Gideon, teacher of Italian cooking classes at a small town recreation center. Gideon was everything William Reid hadn't been: he accepted Spencer's genius and made use of it; he didn't want Spencer to be normal.

Then he left, just like William Reid, and his face pales as he reads this accusation on Spencer's face. Biting on his lower lip, Spencer finally looks back to his empty coffee mug; between the options of making Gideon miserable and not showing weakness, he has to pick the latter. How much of a point is there? If he actually does start crying, it's not as though he'll be able to hide it. Gideon will see it, Spencer will make himself vulnerable to the other man again, and the whole purpose of staring elsewhere will be completely shattered. Swallowing thickly, Spencer feels everything slow down around him, to the point that he feels sick. Earth revolves on its axis and rockets through space at 29.8 kilometers per second, galaxies spin, burn, and fade away, people leave the diner and new customers come in to eat. His head feels submerged, simultaneously weightless and heavy, and he might actually vomit, if he isn't careful.

"There's -- there have been a lot of times when I've really needed you," he manages to get out. He swallows again and tongues his lips, but he only returns Gideon's gaze when he feels the hot, wet tears trailing down one cheek. "I haven't been alone -- I've had the team, Derek and... it was never going to be easy, I know that... but none of them do what you do. Did."

Whatever he's looking for, Spencer's fairly certain that Gideon's hand on his own isn't it. He's not even sure it's a comfort or not -- Gideon's hand is warm, but the contact makes Spencer's stomach churn. "I'm sorry, Spencer," he says gently. "I never meant to cause you any pain."

"I -- I know you didn't, you..." Spencer's nose wrinkles as he wriggles his hand away. Quietly, methodically, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. He hesitantly meets Gideon's eyes as he slides the old, folded letter across the table at the other man. "You said as much yourself."

Is it a low blow? Spencer supposes it is -- confronting Gideon with the last thing he left for anyone on the team forces him to deal with it, when he was clearly more comfortable before, when Spencer let him think this would be easy, if he ever thought that. If he's still Gideon, the real Gideon, the Gideon who Spencer knew, then he probably didn't reach such a fallacious conclusion. The real Gideon wouldn't have assumed that he could get out of this meeting without something being difficult -- or would he? Is the real Gideon this man, who lives with a woman, an English teacher, who looks nothing like Sarah and whom he met in California? What need does she answer in him? To what part of her normal, loving psyche does he speak and what is she getting out of their relationship?

Does the real Gideon work at the same high school she does, helping the kids there deal with stress from classes, parents, from each other? Does he kiss her behind his office door, where none of their students can see them? Does he make her feel special, loved, secure because she thinks he'll never, could never, go away? How much does she know about the man she hugs around the waist and calls "babe" in public? Does she know about Sarah and how she died, or about Stephen and how he and Gideon never talk? What all did Gideon tell her about Spencer, the genius prodigy statistics expert from CalTech with the three Doctorate degrees? Does she know what Gideon used to do, what used to keep him up at night? Does it still wake him up and, if it does, what lies does he tell her to excuse it? Would the real Gideon knowingly deceive his romantic entanglement, even just by not telling her things about his past?

Is the real Jason Gideon this man, who's so taken aback by the letter's presence that, for several moments, all he does is stare at it in perfect silence? Did Spencer ever really know that man, or did he only imagine that he had the privilege?

If only Spencer could have been this good at surprising him when they played chess together -- Gideon's hands shake as he fingers the paper and picks it up. "All this time... and you still kept it?" he asks, his expression and tone both unreadable.

"Of course I did," Spencer answers, confounded himself by that question. "I -- Emily and Derek know about it. At first, I just -- I wanted to understand, I guess? Why you left and everything... and then I thought I did and I -- I couldn't let it go. I didn't want you to be gone."

Spencer knows he isn't good at being left behind, he never has been, but he wishes that he didn't sound so pitiful, so clinging. Any kind of leaving makes his chest feel empty and his heartbeat slow until he's reasonably terrified of bradycardic arrest. From losing his mother in the grocery store to watching his father pack a suitcase and walk out, all the way to how Gideon ditched him -- the missed chess game, the unreturned phone calls, the repetitious voicemail message, the letter sitting on the cabin table with Gideon's badge and gun -- Spencer can't stand knowing that someone he relied on isn't here for him anymore. On his own, he's lonely enough -- people are mystifying creatures, with their eccentricities and tics, the little things that differentiate them amongst their various categories; almost all of his friends are in the Bureau, on the team; when he's comfortable, he plays perfectly fine with others, but when he isn't, he does horribly at trying to be social. Upsetting his perfect little balance makes for one less functional interpersonal relationship he has.

He called Gideon on and off for hours after finding his Moleskine paper goodbye, thinking that maybe the other man would answer, maybe he'd get an explanation in Gideon's voice, maybe he'd hear something other than, "Hello, this is Jason Gideon. I'm not available at the moment; please leave a message and I'll get back to you." He never did, and he always hung up before the beep. On the last time, he managed to get out, "Gideon, it's -- it's Reid. Please… please..."

The nausea's back and, this time, it hits Spencer like a well-aimed bullet, the pain from it radiating up faster than it should. Staring into Gideon's earnest, concerned eyes, Spencer can't believe he didn't know what leaving would do to his protege.

"I'm sorry," Gideon whispers again, and Spencer wants to trust him, but how can he? Is there anything that Gideon could say or do to make this better and does Spencer even want that? Would it be easier if Gideon were William Reid and Spencer could hide all of his emotions behind anger? Would it be easier if Spencer could accuse Gideon of something terrible?

"It has been said that time heals all wounds," Spencer quotes, fussing with a packet of sugar he'll open when he eventually gets his coffee refilled again. "I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone."

"Rose Kennedy."

~*~

As soon as JJ hands out the case files, Spencer knows that this one won't be easy. It goes without saying that BAU cases are never easy, but the first pictures he sees are of the victims -- all five of them are thin, brunet teenage boys, abducted from one of two major shopping centers, tortured extensively for three days, and eviscerated postmortem, laying on piles of leaves and sticks. Although he would have lost his composure some time ago, he's reclaimed himself enough that his first thought is of the visible contrast -- and, as he points out, it is horridly visible. The evisceration and the nature of the pre-mortem torture both imply intense anger, but the care the unsub took with the boys (he kept them groom and deliberately posed their arms to echo icons of Christ crucified) indicate remorse; the specific type in the victimology means that there's likely a sexual component, but there are no signs of sexual abuse or sexual anything, save the saliva remaining from kisses placed on the victims' lips and foreheads, which, luckily for the unsub, has genetic material that none of the various databases recognize.

Even though he's doing well, he can't help but think about Tobias next. Tobias, and the corn field, and how it felt to be knocked down there... For all they could upset him, given enough time, these thoughts are merciful and they don't stick around to make a spectacle of their presence. More sadistic, the close-up images of track marks on the victims arms and ankles nag at Spencer's mind for the better part of the flight. Beyond the personal significance, they present an even stronger and less intelligible contrast. This unsub has the marks of a sexually motivated, sadistic psychopath (the victims all show a preference, the torture is the sadism), killing in a moment of rage (there'd have to be rage, in order to explain the extent of the evisceration) -- so what purpose would the heroin serve? How would a killer who takes the care to use drugs as his tool of the trade go from being so clear-headed to being so enraged?

Knowing the mechanisms of the Dilaudid does nothing whatsoever to alter its effects, for better or for worse. Spencer is a twenty-five-year-old opioid addict and a liar to everyone he knows. When Hotch and Gideon ask how he's holding up, he tells them, "Fine, I'm fine," and does his job like nothing ever happened. When JJ and Garcia offer him hugs, and smiles, and other shows of support, he takes them but tells his friends nothing of how he's feeling or what he's going through. When he writes his mother in Nevada, he leaves out all mentions of anything that could worry her -- Tobias, Charles, Raphael, the events in Georgia, what he's been dosing himself with since being held captive, since watching a murder that he authorized by saving another life. He explains the break in his cycle of sending letters -- because being schizophrenic doesn't make her an idiot; she'll notice and it needs to be explained -- but all he says is that he was in trouble and isn't anymore. Two years from now, he'll need to lie and tell her that he was hospitalized but is fine now, in order to protect a media blackout.

He's stopped wearing short sleeves outside of his apartment with no reasons for this given, and it's getting warmer. He can only get away with it in New Orleans because he's learned that, with enough sugar, he can't taste the Dilaudid in his coffee and it has the same effect. Two weeks earlier, when they're leaving New York, Derek tries to call him on his obviously altered behavior, he's half-asleep and so close to breaking down, to telling Derek everything and begging him for help -- but he can't do it. Genius Doctor Spencer Reid managed to survive being help captive and tortured for three days; he nearly died once and came back to life when Tobias gave him CPR; he can handle himself in the widening gyre of this nauseating aftermath, his personal unraveling and anarchy.

Something isn't right, he knows; it doesn't take a genius to see that, but he wants to think it's nothing he can't manage. So what if he's lost weight and looks an utter mess? He sleeps better than he can ever remember; he doesn't dream much anymore and when he does, it's generally somewhat pleasant -- Mom's warm embrace, her gentle voice reading expertly from Proust... is there anything wrong in recalling the times she wasn't crazy? When she was his mother and wholly recognizable? Besides, Derek ran to Hotch and Gideon when Spencer was just having nightmare -- nightmares! They kept him up at night, but they didn't impede his ability to function -- he was fine all through the case in McAllister! He showed up, he did his job, they figured Cory Bridges out and caught him; nothing needed to be said and Derek still ratted him out to their superiors. What would he do if he knew what Spencer's been sneaking into his morning pick-me-up along with all the sugar?

Of course he'd run and cry wolf to Hotch; he'd have to, there are rules about this kind of thing, both written and tacitly understood. Then Spencer would lose his job and everything else; the FBI can't harbor addicts, Hotch would have to fire him, and without the FBI, what does he have? Three Doctorates, two BAs, a worsening drug habit, and a schizophrenic mother on the other side of the country, who might still be upset with him for having his "fascist" friends "arrest" her. Suffice to say: not much.

Under the jet's table, Spencer feels Derek's fingers on the back of his hand and he shakes himself around. He hasn't missed any of the conversation (the unsub needs to have his own place, given the extent of the pre-mortem torture, and he probably has a habit or some medical training, given the precision with which he overdosed the boys). He could parrot it back quite easily and he hardly needs the context of debating what the heroin means, but he hasn't spoken in long enough that it's potentially worrisome.

"Maybe he's trying to protect them," he chimes in, pulling his hand away from Derek's and running it through his hair.

"How do you mean, Reid?" Hotch prompts. Spencer looks at him and Emily across the table and neither of them looks particularly pleased with this possible insight into things. He can't blame them for that: the case is grisly on its own without adding another layer of complication to the profile, and Spencer's line of thought is as esoteric as ever. Next to him, Derek doesn't look as intrigued as he'd like, nor does JJ; more than that, Derek looks perturbed by where this acumen's come from and what it might mean, and JJ looks concerned. Only Rossi has the sort of face Spencer expects to see, which makes sense; he didn't deal with the case in Georgia.

From the back of his mind, Spencer hears Tobias's words echoing: "It helps... It helps... It helps..."

"It's possible that this unsub's dealing with a dissociative identity," Spencer points out, even though he doesn't fully believe that explanation. Dissociatives look more like team killers, in his experience, and this is clearly the work of one man alone.

Before he can continue and explain, Rossi pipes up: "You think we're dealing with a case of multiple personalities?"

"No, actually, I think that, given the evidence, it's incredibly unlikely. We'd see more evidence of the dissociation, especially with this many victims. Something would look more out of place than it does."

"So what are you suggesting?" Emily asks.

"Dissociation's just a... a vaguely plausible occurrence," he explains, absentmindedly fussing with his hands. "But... whatever's causing it, this unsub's moods are violently unstable and they change too quickly for him to control. When he kidnaps them and when he tortures them, he's angry, he's rash -- after that, when he's calmer, he brushes their hair and... eventually, he uses the drugs to kill them easily. They'd already be weak, so there's no reason to weaken them, so... it becomes like a mercy killing."

"So he's putting them down," Derek prompts for clarification.

"Yeah, he -- he knows what he'll do to them when his moods escalate again, so he puts them down to protect them, but then... when he sees that he's done, he gets explosively angry and eviscerates them..."

"Then he comes down again, dumps them, and kisses them goodbye," Emily finishes the thought for him and Spencer nods. "There's hardly any blood on the crime scenes -- maybe he's removing them from his place to get rid of the reminder of what he's done, and with the posing and the significance of the three days... he could be hyperreligious, modeling his kills after Christ answers some need in him, either before or after the murder."

"What could cause moods like that if it's not DID?" Derek sighs, leaning back in his seat and flipping through the autopsy reports.

Spencer rattles off a list without any trouble: "Other possible explanations include paranoid schizophrenia, borderline personality, rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, syphilis or organic dementia, brain injury, abuse of alcohol, or certain types of narcotics or hallucinogens--"

He could go on all too easily, but Hotch interrupts to cut him off: "We can bat around ideas for the source when we have more evidence. If this unsub's moods are this violent, he'll try to kill again before we catch him and we'll be able to work from there. Until then, we need to increase community vigilance and attempt to keep as many boys safe as we can. Prentiss and Rossi, the latest victim's mother is expecting you for an interview; Morgan and Reid, head to the shopping centers and see if someone has any memories we missed, get the security footage to Garcia and have her analyze it; JJ, come with me to the local precinct." He pauses before adding on, "This isn't going to be an easy one, team, and I need everyone's heads in this."

Spencer doesn't even consider that Hotch is directing this at him until he pulls him aside and asks if Spencer's feeling well enough to handle himself on the case, if he needs to sit this one out. Does he actually expect Spencer to admit that, even if he did feel like the questions were merited? True enough, this case hits its own special kind of nerve for him, but he doesn't need to sit it out because of that -- he has the team behind him, he went to a meeting before they left, and there's no way Derek will let him get away with trying to dodge another meeting after. As Hotch put it, the case isn't going to be an easy one for anyone; emotionally, psychologically, it's going to be trying, exhausting, and it might well wear them all down -- but at least Spencer knows that going into things. He can prepare himself for what they encounter and get ready for it; he's pushing three years of sobriety, even if it doesn't get easier, he should have some strategies up his sleeves. The world won't stop because he has trouble.

None of them can brace him for what he and Derek find at the mall, though. As a matter of personal preference, Spencer likes to avoid malls, when he can, but there's nothing too far out of the ordinary today. None of the security guards remember anything, but they willingly send the relevant footage to Garcia. The stores' respective groups of personnel recalls an odd man skulking around and looking at the teenage boys, either. Everyone's all too willing to step up vigilance, to watch out and call the tip line if they see anyone or anything suspicious, to try and help protect the boys of Olympia from something potentially awful. Outside of what Spencer has to see for work, everything is perfectly normal: groups of high school girls having fun, probably not even particularly on guard because the unsub targets boys; families with young children, heading for the playpen area in the center; a bride in a tiara and veil leaves some formalwear place with her bridesmaids...

And then Spencer wanders off a bit while Derek's in the food court restroom. Given his history, he should have learned the danger of splitting up, but this doesn't occur to him until it's too late. He and JJ split up in Georgia; he got bludgeoned, kidnapped, tortured, and drugged. He and Derek split up not too long ago, in Maryland; Spencer wound up exposed to anthrax. Now, he meanders off, following someone against his better judgment (this man doesn't even fit the possible physical types the unsub would fall into; why is the urge to follow him so strong? Why is Spencer stringing along behind him, tailing the magnetic pull?) and when his target finally turns around, Spencer finds himself face-to-face with the one thing he can think of that's worse than a heroin overdose COD, the one thing he gave up preparing himself for.

As he advances slowly, he can't stop himself from whispering, "Gideon?"

It's not at all comforting that Gideon looks just as confused as he is; if anything, it only makes the situation worse. The recognition is spelled out clearly on the other man's face. Even if they wanted to, Spencer's sure that neither of them could run. He's within arm's length of Gideon by the time the thought even occurs to him. What does he do now? Should he hug Gideon, as part of him so greatly wants to, or is it too soon for that? Does he spill his soul and demand answers here, or would that just cause an unnecessary scene? Is there a playbook, somewhere, for proper etiquette when seeing a former mentor for the first time in just over two years?

Gideon tries to smile as he says, "You look well, Spencer." And all Spencer can think about is his father saying that they no longer look alike.

"No, I don't," he retorts before thinking about it. "I mean, it's nice of you to say so, but it's not -- it isn't true."

"What're you doing here, Spencer?" The unspoken question is more than obvious: How did you find me? Spencer's not sure that Gideon would believe that this meeting is as impromptu as it seems.

"Have you heard anything about... the boys getting killed and dumped in Lions Park?"

Gideon pales and nods. "I knew one of them, Tommy Abbott. He was one of my students." Before Spencer's instincts kick in and he rattles off statistics or the figures of Tommy Abbott's autopsy, how he fits into the profile, Gideon adds, "They finally called in the BAU?"

"That's why I'm here," Spencer answers quietly. "I -- I'm sorry, I wish I didn't have to be."

Before Gideon can answer this, they're interrupted by the sudden presence of a woman -- not really pretty or notably stunning, but what one might call handsome. She's average all over: 5'7", at her tallest, modestly dressed, blonde. The only thing that really distinguishes her is that, when she intrudes on the meeting, she hugs Gideon around the waist and calls him, "Jason, babe." She asks who Spencer is and when Gideon introduces him as CalTech's Spencer Reid, the look of recognition on her face is unmistakable, but sweet. Smiling, she takes his hand and tells him how Jason's told her all about him, how he always speaks so highly of the genius. Her name is Sharon and she teaches high school English where Gideon serves as guidance counselor (that explains the Tommy Abbott connection); she says it's a pleasure to meet one of Jason's old friends. They're so comfortable together; it just makes Spencer more acutely aware of how stunned and awkward he is.

Spencer knows that this first can't also be their last meeting, but he's also cognizant of how Sharon can't be around the next time. Before the team finishes the case, he'll use another victim's disappearance as an excuse to canvas schools and interview people, knocking on Gideon's office door for "strictly business" purposes -- Gideon used to do what he does; he has to remember how important victimology is to the profile, to catching this killer. As the guidance counselor, he's bound to know something that's missing until he gets involved. Spencer will make a mistake, though: he'll prod too much and upset Gideon in a way he didn't mean to -- but it gets him his meeting at the diner, so is it really all that bad? Right when he doesn't want it to, Spencer's phone goes off and he excuses himself. He says it was good to see Gideon, nice to meet Sharon, and, obeying the orders he'd get if he'd answer his phone, he leaves to go meet Derek.

Back at the food court, Derek asks what's eating him and Spencer guesses that he can't be too subtle, at the moment; it'd require too much effort on his part, and Derek could still probably tell.

"Do you believe in dreams predicting the future?" he asks, following Derek out and towards the car.

After a few minutes of prodding and oblique answers, Derek finally just asks: "What're you getting at, kid?"

Spencer stops walking and turns to look right at him. "Gideon's here, Derek. In Olympia, he's -- it's really him."

"The Gideon?" Derek believes him, but it's clear he doesn't want to do so. "What's he doing here?"

"He lives here, with... with this woman. They work at a high school, he's a guidance counselor, they -- he knew one of the victims--"

"Spencer, if you're trying to turn this into what you did with your father..." Derek warns, taking his sunglasses off to better emphasize how serious he is. "I know you're upset at him, kid, and you've got every right to that -- but you know Gideon wouldn't do something like this, and there's no way Hotch is gonna let you--"

"What? No -- God no, that's not what I'm saying at all, he doesn't fit the profile at all," Spencer interrupts. He might not perfectly know what he's saying, but it definitely isn't that. "I just... all this time, I've been... I don't know, I've been waiting for some kind of sign of him or something, but... I mean, I never thought I'd actually get one. I wanted one, sure, but -- statistically, there's always some chance that we'll work a case and end up wherever he did, but I..."

This time, when he trails off, his voice cracks and doesn't let him speak again. Derek hugs him around the shoulders, and since, technically, they got off duty when they went through the last store, Spencer practically clings to him, knowing that he can't get in trouble for being affectionate with his partner when they aren't working. They especially can't be blamed for it considering the circumstances -- who wouldn't allow Spencer to reach out for someone now? Without saying it, they agree not to tell Hotch unless it's necessary; by the time they're sent to the hotel to rest, Garcia is the only other person who knows, and she only knows because Spencer tried to get her to fish around and dig up anything she could on Gideon, a search Derek immediately called off "for Spencer's own good."

As far as reasons go, it's not the best, but, really, Derek could do much worse. His intentions are more than good, which Spencer can appreciate, at least. Maybe his standards for Derek are just set higher than they would be for anyone else; given their first time together and everything that's happened since, he's been handed plenty of reason to raise the bar for his partner. Even now, as Derek gently lowers Spencer onto what he knows is a Holiday Inn mattress, it could be his sofa. Time is relative -- even if their experience of it is linear, it's simultaneously now and directly after the incident with Cyrus. Derek's insisted on driving Spencer home from the airstrip, on pausing at a drug store and grabbing Spencer a snack, though Spencer's insisted the whole way that he's perfectly fine. Regardless of what she says, Emily's the one everyone should worry about; she actually sustained serious injuries -- Spencer only got hit in the stomach once and it isn't as though he's a stranger to being held hostage. This hasn't even been the worst of his experiences, in that regard.

It's hardly that things between him and Derek are tense, but the level of misunderstood, unspoken things keeps rising -- Derek comments on Spencer's lack of a television, Spencer points out that there's never anything good on and when would he have the chance to watch it anyway; Derek keeps asking if he's alright, Spencer keeps telling him that he's fine and expecting him to believe it, even if the record shows that Spencer isn't always fine when he claims to be. Between the two of them, something's mounting, but Spencer doesn't even consider what it is, all the possibilities it could have, until, leaning on the back of the sofa, Derek sighs heavily, "Pretty boy, why do you do this to me?"

Spencer can't seem to hold one surprised expression in particular, but each shift in his face says the same thing. "I -- what?"

"Reid, I thought we were gonna lose you out there these past couple days--"

"Yeah, because I've never been there before," Spencer notes, further surprised when his light tone isn't received well.

"Don't be like that Reid; I'm being serious." For all the things Spencer can't suss out in this room, he didn't need to be told that. As he sinks onto the sofa, he keeps his gaze fixed on Derek, following the other man with his eyes when Derek joins him. "I just -- have we been in that position before? You bet your ass -- but when you were trapped out there, we all got to hear Cyrus wailing on Prentiss, and it was more obvious than ever that it could've been you in that position. ...I mean, when Rossi called it a 'minimal loss' situation--"

"It was a minimal loss situation." It's not that the emotional significance of what Derek's trying to say is lost on him -- far from it; it's just that Spencer's unconscious reaction to difficult situations is to be right, somehow, even if it's just by pointing out that Rossi was right.

Unexpectedly, Derek laughs and looks away from him. "See, that is exactly what I was thinking of when Rossi called minimal loss." When Spencer asks after his meaning, Derek explains: "You, Reid. Your little quirks, how you do things like that... and how much I'd miss it if I couldn't hear you pointing out the obvious because it makes you feel more comfortable, or talking about Star Trek, or figuring out patterns that computers can't see. There was every chance we could've lost you out there, and I don't think I could live with that." He pauses before adding on how he doesn't want to be the guy who didn't speak up for his love until it was too late to do anything. "Please don't let me be that guy, Reid."

Who kisses whom first, Spencer isn't sure; all he knows is that he feels a spark in this kiss that he's never felt before. He flings himself headlong into it and Derek gently lowers him onto the sofa, telling him it's alright, to just relax. Spencer thinks of Melody from the party on his eighteenth birthday; he thinks of Alissa and how, the first time they have sex in the library, they crash into the stacks so hard that a loose book falls onto the small of his back (the culprit, he sees later, is Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art: Selected Papers: Selected Papers, a Meyer Schapiro text; he's seen a different edition among all of Mom's books); he thinks of JJ and the Redskins game, how everything about the situation terrifies him out of potency. He doesn't think about the obvious lines of though until his shirt and Derek's are on the floor together, their zippers have both been undone, and Derek pauses their fast, hungry kissing to get something from his back pocket (lubricant and a condom, Spencer will see in a matter of moments; that explains the stop at the drug store) --

"Morgan!" he interjects. "Morgan -- wait!"

"What -- is... everything alright, Reid?" He's surprisingly sensitive, for having this moment interrupted. "And it's Derek here."

"It's -- it's Spencer here," he echoes, pointing at himself. Then he adds, "I -- it's been a while."

"What? Since JJ?"

Spencer shakes his head. "No, not -- not JJ. I didn't even -- I couldn't... perform -- I guess would be the phrase you'd use?" When Derek asks for clarification, Spencer gives it to him, wholly and honestly: "I mean, I -- I've never been..." He can't bring himself to say it and, instead, just points in the general direction of the sex. "But -- but Ethan was my last..."

An unreadable expression crosses Derek's face, but before Spencer can think too much on it, the other man kisses him and whispers, "Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

To his credit, he's more delicate than Spencer expects him to be; everything is still messy, painful, and uncomfortable, but it's better than it could be and, over breakfast the next morning, he can honestly say that he liked it. By contrast, sex with Ethan was hardly even sex and all they did, come morning, was go to some seedy diner near Ethan's place. Some days, Spencer isn't even sure whether or not what happened counts. He's hardly the sort of guy to count notches on bedposts; it's just a matter of categories and accuracy. Even his stunning failure with JJ counts for something -- it counts as his first experience with sexual failure.

What happened with Ethan is one memory Spencer wishes he didn't have; or, if he lacks the ability to get rid of it entirely, then it could do him a courtesy and be less acute; if not that, it could leave him to have sex with Derek without making itself known. Between the two kinds of chemicals having their way with his head, Spencer knows he isn't thinking clearly, that his scads of inhibitions are too far gone for anything he does to be a good idea -- but he's still on Ethan before they're even in his apartment. In the corridor, it's just kissing, but once they're inside, he's so desperate for any kind of contact that Ethan's the only reason they make it to the couch. Before he fully realizes what he's gotten himself into, Spencer hears his trousers coming undone, feels one of Ethan's hands working into his pants and taking him...

Then Ethan's free hand gets his shirt off and everything pauses. Ethan's brow furrows, and though he doesn't say anything, he runs his hand from Spencer's clavicle to his navel, attracting attention to what Spencer's been content to ignore until now. He's always been skinny; now, he's downright concave, practically collapsing in on himself. His bones are obvious -- when did they get to be so obvious? Could he catch water in his collarbone? Will he become a black hole after too long? Is it inevitable that his expiration will come when he can no longer sustain himself? How much will he take with him if that happens? He knew he was in trouble before this, but being confronted with it is exhausting, nauseating -- will he throw up what he hasn't eaten or can Ethan stave that off?

With little pretension or flair, Ethan finishes up and goes to wash his hands. From the kitchenette of his studio apartment, he sighs and reminds Spencer that, for being a genius, he's certainly acting like an idiot. At least he lets Spencer stay the night; he can't go back and face the team until Derek and Emily are back from Galveston.

~*~

Their food comes, Spencer's coffee gets refilled and over-sugared once again, and Gideon's still looking at the letter. Perhaps, by now, he can't make heads or tails of how he said goodbye either. That makes two of them. Spencer's filled a journal of his own with thoughts on what Gideon meant by everything he said and what sort of explanation he thought he was leaving, but his interpretation just can't make itself solid -- it always changes based on Spencer's external circumstances, how he feels each time he rereads it.

Finally, Gideon slides the letter back towards Spencer and whispers, "What do you want from me, Spencer?" His expression is impenetrable -- is it anger or fear? Is that a hint of breaking that Spencer catches in his voice, or does Spencer only want it to be?

Spencer swallows thickly and, quietly, he has to admit: "I don't know."


	4. Chapter 4

Coming here, Spencer had designs to be nice -- he remembers thinking that he owed Gideon the courtesy. After so long away, Gideon deserves a meeting that isn't full of all that they've missed in each other, or at least without the negative sides. Perhaps it's a lie, Spencer's statement of intention, his thought that he meant the best -- honesty, while the best policy, is something horrible and difficult to muster, giving Spencer as much trouble as the powerful allure of going off the wagon; Spencer hasn't outright lied during this entire sit-down, but he hasn't told Gideon everything either. Maybe, just maybe, in that willful exclusion of some (most) details, the ones he's not allowed or just refuses to share, he's lied to Gideon, but he's quite certain, as he stops Ellen and politely asks her for a strawberry milkshake, that lying now falls lower on his list of sins against his old mentor.

Why did Gideon even agree to meet him here? Probably just to get Spencer off his back -- throw the genius Doctor Reid a bone, then he'll go back to Quantico, Gideon will stay here, and it might as well be like he was never in Olympia, never in that mall at that time, never being a remembrance of things past to begin with -- that must be it. Any paternal instincts that might have driven Gideon to his protege long ago must have passed on into the ether by now, they probably did so when he finished his goodbye letter. It can't be the food or the atmosphere, unless Gideon's gotten over certain things, and who knows? He could have done that, it's certainly possible, though even Spencer doesn't know the statistics that would explain it. Given what he knows of Gideon, getting over that in favor of a happy life is very likely. It's just also true that he doesn't have a good history with diners.

Off the main drag in Golconda, there's a diner almost exactly like this one, and almost exactly like the all-night diner Spencer went to with Ethan after all their final exams, and almost exactly like another of their fellows in the Poconos that Spencer may or may not be going to with Derek, the next time they get a break. All of them are near-perfect copies, as though painstakingly modeled from the same plan, by the same metaphysical craftsman. Clearly, he took so much pride in his masterwork design that he had to schedule repeat performances across the country. Other diners, close cousins to these four, must be out there, somewhere. Their color schemes are different, the waitresses have uniforms unique to their location, they don't have the same pictures or knick-knacks on their respective walls -- but that diner in Golconda has the irremovable stain of tragedy on it.

That alteration can't be seen, but it's something you can feel, the way the air inside Mom's house always changed when she went crazy. Coming home from school, Spencer would feel the agitated charge tickling the air like a battery, he'd smell the difference and know what he'd find in her room, or at the kitchen table. Golconda has the same feeling of premonition, lingering like unforgiving clouds over that little diner, that place where people should feel safe enough to sit and eat. They rained only once, during the worst of the trauma -- and with Frank dead, they never will again -- but it doesn't take a genius to see the truth about that diner in Golconda. It can never be the same.

Some people don't know this -- most don't, really -- but those who do remember the stand-off, and the kidnapped kids, and how a sexually sadistic psychopath came through their little town each year, looking for time with his woman, the only one who hadn't shown him fear when he'd tried to cut her up. Every time he wandered through, he stopped there, and he always got a strawberry milkshake, nothing more, nothing less. Spencer wonders if they still serve those things there.

Ellen smiles, broadly and innocently, when she brings Spencer's concoction of milk, ice, and artificial flavoring; it's the sort of smile that she would have reserved for children, had she gotten around to having them. As she sets down the perspiring glass and refill, saying, "Here you go, sweetheart. Enjoy." She has a tone that suggests her relief at seeing him order something visibly unhealthy. So he's not so thin because he doesn't eat. It must be stress from work, or just a natural predisposition towards his slender build. Returning the look, he thanks her, but waits until she leaves to begin.

He keeps his face neutral, if a bit wide-eyed, spooning the whipped cream into his mouth, swallowing the melting mix of chemicals, and dropping in the straw. Putting the straw to his lips and sipping, he can't help but smirk a little. Even if his lips don't curve into the self-satisfaction he feels, his eyes do, and Gideon has to be aware of this. Politely enough for everyone else, he points the straw across the table.

"Want to try some?" he asks, pleasant, measured, as though he has no idea what he's doing.

Gideon is not impressed. "You're being passive-aggressive."

"What? Me?" His tone's still light.

Of course he's being passive-aggressive. That was rather the point, wasn't it? To make Gideon uncomfortable while not doing a thing to attract attention to them or flaunt this discomfort. This is the least that Spencer should be afforded. Since they've been here, he's let Gideon get away with telling him he's not that hard to profile, asking him not to force Gideon to do so, reminding him that his leaving wasn't meant to cause Spencer any pain, talking about Derek -- Gideon's allowed to push his buttons. In a way, Spencer's just returning the favor.

"Yes, you," Gideon says calmly. "Special Agent Doctor Spencer William Reid."

Spencer wrinkles his nose. "What, did they teach you that in FBI school?"

It seems all too long ago that he asked the same of Elle: she broke into a drawer, in the process finding a laptop that they needed for that case, and, baffled, he asked her, "Did they teach you that in FBI school?" Oh, the logic underlying her actions was perfectly clear -- find the dirt (pornographic images of young boys, or, more specifically, something tying this Mehtevas, this well-respected principal, to the auction of Dustin Powers), catch the unsub, and take down a ring of pedophiles while they're at it. What made no sense was the casual ease with which she handled the drawer and picking its lock, how the only thing keeping them from their former prosecutor boss was a door and a glass window but Elle just didn't care. Because they're the BAU, and they needed to get their man.

Ever herself, she snarked back, "No, they taught me that in Brooklyn."

It's not to say that he doesn't like Emily, because he does. The three years she's been on the team have brought Spencer a new friend, someone he respects and enjoys being around -- but sometimes, he really does miss Elle. If he could have helped her more, if he'd blown the whistle sooner (he saw her drinking, at the very least), she might not have gone off the rails so badly. Maybe she could've been helped, but, then again, maybe she's happier now that she's not in the BAU.

Spencer thought similarly of Gideon until now. Now, instead of smiling, the way he's tried to through this meeting, his face is pale, his eyes stormy. None -- or very little -- of his paternal charm lingers, and, even though this comes as a surprise, Spencer knows he's brought it on himself.

~*~

Spencer brings a lot of things on himself -- all he can think sometimes, handcuffed in this wooden chair, is that if he hadn't been such an idiot, he wouldn't be here now. He knows better than to think like this; hypotheticals don't help right now, they can't, because it's impossible to tell what Tobias might have done, but he would have helped himself to impossible degrees if he hadn't split up from JJ. He also knows better than to blame himself for Raphael's latest murders; he saved Marilyn David, he's not responsible for the others. Charles and Raphael are perverting religion to justify murder -- through a webcam, Gideon said exactly that and the truth of his words rings clearer, truer than the memories he's revisited, than his mother delicately pronouncing Proust or the door slamming as his father leaves...

It's just that the screams of Raphael's victims are louder than everything else. The knife sings as Spencer watches the webcam feeds, minute symphonies are played out in shrill, rushing violins each time Raphael slaughters someone for his or her respective sin. Like animals, all too easily, they die. Marilyn David is lucky, and Spencer is a genius, but how much of a genius could he really be, if he can't find some way to keep all of them that lucky? Before, he managed to keep some unconscious moments to himself, but now he only closes his eyes when Tobias loads him up with Dilaudid. Tobias who comes through the door so skittishly, who looks just like the Raphael who has killed so many and held a loaded gun to Spencer's head; Tobias, who's the spitting image of his father Charles -- Tobias who looks the same as they do, but improves on them. He can't help but do so; he gives Spencer a reprieve.

And is that really so much better? Spencer isn't sure. By the third time, he's relieved. It isn't rest, not like this, not seeing Mom at the kitchen table with her books or watching the orderlies escort her out. Is she even louder than the dying people outside his head? Before he can consider that, Charles speaks again -- What're you sorry for, boy? Possibly a pointless question, Spencer muses, but without the abrasive yelling from before. In a way, it's almost tender, the way Charles listens, tells him to name his punishment as writ in Exodus, takes off his handcuffs...

Throwing hints to the team, directly addressing Hotch, resolving to be survive because of Gideon (You are stronger than him, he cannot break you repeats itself ad nauseam as Spencer fumbles his shovel, claws into the freezing earth, feels it worm underneath his fingernails) -- all of these, Spencer planned to do. He orchestrated them, played his chess pieces in a way that would trounce Gideon, were real life a game-board. Shooting Charles is a blur of opportunity -- somewhat distanced from them, he hears the entrance of the team. Charles is distracted, his pistol falls; Spencer grabs it and gets lucky -- oh, his shot hits perfectly, and its noise is met by Morgan shouting, "Reid!" But it was luck, a chance of one in six, that put the bullet in the chamber then.

It's luck or lack thereof, he tells himself, that killed Tobias Hankel. If not for the abuse, there'd be no Dilaudid; if not for the Dilaudid, there'd be no psychotic break; if not for the psychotic break, there'd be no murders; if not for the murders, there'd be no kidnapping; if not for the kidnapping, Spencer wouldn't need to shoot Tobias to kill Charles and Raphael. His stumbling crawls bring him to Tobias just in time to hear his last words, to watch his eyes go dull. Do you think I'll ever see my mom again? Spencer wants to cry, but there's no time for that; the team's coming, they can't see him like that. Knowing what they saw on the webcam is bad enough.

He hugs Hotch. Hotch returns the gesture, and the rest of the team, somehow, shows their support. Spencer takes a minute to himself, fumbling the leftover Dilaudid into his pocket, and, on the ride to the hospital, he can't make himself look at Gideon. For a while, that's fine. The EMTs are busy checking him for things they can deal with, what they need to report to the real doctors, the ones for whom Spencer's frequently mistaken when, in his firm, business voice, Gideon introduces him as "Doctor Reid." The shield of efficiency falls away before they reach the hospital.

With the tenderness Spencer is still unaccustomed to, that particular warmth unique to him, Gideon whispers, "You did well, Spencer. You're going to be all right." And Spencer isn't sure whether or not to count this as a lie. The next time he'll see the inside of an ambulance, he'll be willing to give anything for Gideon to be there with him, telling him what's been said now. Kimura will do her best, her job, everything she can -- but she won't have the fortitude to lie and give Spencer any false hope, and when the aphasia sets in, she'll be momentarily stricken speechless.

At the hospital, everything is so matter-of-fact and procedural, so by-the-book that the tenderness he's given sometimes seems surprising. Every time a nurse touches him, Spencer freezes for a second, his tension nigh imperceptible. He has a shower, refuses to let anyone take his clothes. JJ and Morgan stay the night with Spencer, which isn't a shock in the slightest, not given his desire to protect people and her guilty conscience. What is comes in the middle of the night, when Spencer comes to from a dreamless sleep and sees Elle sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling her sardonic, Brooklyn-bred smile.

She's wearing scrubs -- why would she be wearing scrubs? She hasn't been out of the BAU long enough to have become a nurse yet. More importantly, why would she be in Georgia, of all places?

"What are the statistics on people who survive what we did, Reid?" she asks. Something's not perfectly right about her voice -- the accent and the timbre are the same as Spencer remembers, but there's a suspicious absence of the edge she used to have. Did leaving the Bureau take that away?

"They're... they're not very hopeful," he says slowly, stumbling over his figures like a drunk dancer. ...Statistics about PTSD, he knows the statistics about PTSD, knows them better than he knows more practical things (like the value of not splitting up), why can't he remember the stupid statistics about PTSD?

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," she comments airily, her guarded, desperate tone the same as that night in Ohio, when he found her drinking -- but, again, the edge is missing. "Approximately seven-point-seven million Americans over the age of eighteen are thought to suffer from it, twice as many women do as men, median age of onset is twenty-three, and based on reports from mothers, sixteen-point-five percent of children who lived through a life-threatening hurricane showed symptoms of PTSD a year after the event. Nineteen percent of Vietnam vets have experienced it, and twenty-one percent of men who suffer from PTSD because of combat exposure engage in spousal or partner abuse... I don't think you'll need to worry about that, at least, Reid."

"Because I don't have a partner?"

"No." She shakes her head sympathetically. "Because if you tried anything with the team, even JJ could kick your scrawny ass." For a long moment, which takes forever, like how time seems to slow when an unpleasant touch won't go away, she sits in silence, staring at the wall. Spencer looks from her to that spot, and all he sees are spiders, scuttling along and minding their own business.

Finally, she asks him: "What did it feel like in that shed, Reid? How could you deal with having to trust someone you knew hurt you so badly?"

"Elle, I... Hankel was having a psychotic break, he'd -- his consciousness had split into three different personalities... it wasn't Tobias that tortured me--"

"It was Tobias who drugged you," she points out.

"But... but, his father--"

"They had the same face, Reid," she sighs. "Don't tell me that you're dealing with this perfectly." Another pause before she looks at him again, moves closer to him on the bed. "You're not dealing with this perfectly, Reid, and you won't. You can't do it -- no, not even you, genius Doctor Reid. Don't try to tell yourself that you can cope with this on your own either, because you know what that feels like?"

Following her eyes downward, he sees that he's been cut open, but there isn't any blood coming. How weird is that? He's not bleeding and he feels fine -- until he feels something worming slowly across his insides and hears his heartbeat in his ears. Had it stopped before now? If it did stop, why does it come back now with a pounding that drowns everything else in a haze? Why do the edges blur, the colors run together?

And then, why does it stop like hitting a brick wall? Everything snaps back into place, and Spencer sees Elle standing opposite him, a thin black paintbrush in her hand. On the wall, in what he knows is his blood, sits one word: WEAKNESS. Looking out the door, she calls, "Are you ready, Doctor Hankel?"

Before Spencer knows it, Tobias swoops in and pins him to the bed with just one hand. Where Elle's hand was, Tobias's now feels around, tracing along the sensitive cells and pressuring them where he sees fit to do so -- only the colors don't blur this time, the edges don't drip and melt like some Dalí nightmare. Spencer feels everything, he sees it all, down to the dirt on Tobias's fingernails. Sweat trails down his forehead, cheeks, neck, but he's paralyzed. Even his vocal chords don't work. Tobias claws into his heart, grinning, demoniac, not himself, or Charles, or Raphael -- and even staring at that face, Spencer can't bring himself to scream...

"Reid!"

Spencer jolts awake still in his bed, shaking and cold sweating, Derek's hand on his shoulder, the other man's eyes wide. Inhaling makes him tremble, subject to the whims of an unseen breeze, freezing under the white light of the hospital.

Things do not get better. Spencer doesn't see how they can.

Immediately upon his return to active duty, he's whisked off to the New York suburbs. No paperwork, no room for recovery, he doesn't need to recover. Gideon hand-picked him for the team for a reason: he's a genius... but he has to question that right now. If he really were so smart, he could move on, he could forget Tobias and the heavy scent of burning fish hearts. Wooden chairs wouldn't remind him of the shed so much that he still avoids sitting in them to this extent. He's Genius Doctor Reid, he should be able to pull through this.

So why, when he's alone, does he always feel cold? His own steps on the hardwood floor make him shake, sometimes. The only warmth he finds is chemical, and yet he doesn't want it. He knows better, far better, than to think this high is his to chase. Genius Doctor Reid wouldn't want to escape. Genius Doctor Reid would have the strength to cope. Genius Doctor Reid wouldn't succumb to nightmares or to the force of memories; he'd buck up and do Gideon proud. He'd put his brilliant mind to work and get over it, knowing that at least he managed to survive.

But Spencer looks at his life and what's been thrust upon him, and when he sees it, he can't think straight. Nausea explodes in him like gunfire when he tries to remember that those sensations just aren't real, that he's here and not in Georgia, that Tobias's lifeless eyes are just products of his over-stressed imagination. Spencer can't be Genius Doctor Reid; Spencer just wants to get away.

At the metro stop that morning, his first morning back to work, he sees someone light a cigarette and stops dead, the smell of blackened entrails as fresh a week later as if Charles had just set the fire. Someone knocks into him and his feet hurt, his lungs seize up and his heartbeat's imperceptible, like he's going into cardiac arrest again. Still, he presses on, slouching towards his destination. When some kids laugh, it ricochets off the walls and vaulted ceilings, careens into Spencer and pulls him under, turns the shed into the football field. His hands feel bound and handcuffed, both at once; he feels the goalpost against his back, hears Alexa Lisbon and the others jeering, smells the smoldering flesh, and freezes underneath his many layers -- then he hears the train. He remembers where he is. He doesn't cry or falter, just gets on and heads to his familiar stop.

Work trips up his attempted façade, but he doesn't lose his head. It's just hard to keep cool when JJ shares the case. He's seen hundreds of crime scene photos, and so many of them were worse than these, but as soon as he sees Sandra Davis in the leaves, he loses track of things again. Anything that goes near his neck feels like straw and leaves, which makes his heart rate climb. These feelings just aren't right -- he wasn't in Georgia or in high school earlier, and he's not back in the corn field now.

It just gets worse. By the time he holes up in the precinct bathroom, he's sure he won't be able to keep his coffee down. Swallowing thickly, he hears Tobias around every corner and his hands shake. Controlling it gets to be too hard. Is he trapped inside a maelstrom, or is this normal for survivors? Did Elle's hands ever do the same? Did she ever look into a mirror and see a ghost who couldn't be anyone but her? Spencer's ghost is pale, slightly thinner than he remembers, and clearly sleepless. It sets its coffee down to rummage for the vials in his bag, intends to shoot up and pours the Dilaudid into his coffee when he hears Hotch calling. Past all the sugar, the taste of drugs is hard to find.

When it starts to wear off, he doses another drink -- it's wrong, he knows full well, but it's better than hearing the clicks of a revolver, his own weak voice begging reason, pleading logic in the face of Raphael. Only Morgan seems to notice, or, if anyone else does, they say nothing. Not even Gideon speaks up about it. Even Derek doesn't bring it up until they're on the jet back home, and Spencer doesn't let it get that far. Under Derek's scrutinizing eyes, Spencer's insides writhe and tremble, the arctic chill sweeps over him again, and he deflects. Blaming the crime scene photos is easier than admitting something like this -- and really, how can he trust Morgan? Morgan ran to Hotch and Gideon about Spencer's nightmares; for Dilaudid, he'd have to blow the whistle.

Derek doesn't press the issue, but some small part of Spencer wishes that he would. As they leave the jet, he wants someone to come home with him and make sure he's okay; he wants to break down and confess, but owning up to his weakness would just make things worse. Once he set out there, he wouldn't be able to get it back. All his wounds and more would be left open for judgment and derision; everything is ammunition that could get him fired. He says nothing, no one seems to think he might need help. This, he thinks as he gets on the late-night metro, must be how Elle felt: the past slithered up around her ankles and legs, wrapped like vines around her chest, then tightened on her neck. She was anchored in a quagmire while everyone else went forward -- and now Spencer feels it too.

The stop he gets off at isn't where he goes to get home, it's not even close. Under the frigid haze of street lamps, he's ventures into the Capitol's dregs, down streets he once traversed only because he wanted to help people. Whores and junkies go together, it's classic textbook. In odd reflections and plays of light, he sees ghosts of Nathan Harris -- the pallid face, the haunted eyes, the bleeding wrists... it couldn't be anyone else. Spencer needs to shake himself around to remember that Nathan can't be here -- he can't because he's getting help. With new vials of Dilaudid in his pocket, Spencer sees one of the women he helped protect from Ronald Weems, the blonde one who was friends with Holly, their fourth victim; she smiles at him and waves. He goes home, shoots up, and tries his damnedest to forget; he leaves behind the icy streets for the warm comfort of his drug.

It starts to show; how can it not? Even before New Orleans, he starts to feel all his lies unraveling, his security of deflection wearing thin beneath him. After a week of paperwork and waiting for a new case, Morgan sits on Spencer's desk and asks if he wants to go grab lunch. Spencer refuses, but has to wonder when the last time he ate was. He doesn't remember. If anyone would ask, he'd talk their ears off about the dreams he's had, about when Mom read him Chaucer and when her hair was long but she took care of it, when her episodes came less frequently, and when she didn't seem to be so crazy. Her embrace was warm, her kisses soft, and she was once again his mother, if only in his head.

More time passes between cases. Spencer knows better than to go and think that there's a lull in serial killers and rapist activity, but there's enough time for things to get much worse. Every time Spencer shoots up or drugs his coffee, a little bit of tolerance gets laid; each subsequent hit has less of a kick behind it, less impact on his nervous system. They offer less and less protection, and Spencer only sees one option: taking more, more, still more, wondering when his point of overdose might be and hoping to never find out the hard way...

Houston is a disaster, there's no other word for it. The future of this case is foretold when he comes in late, something unheard of on his track record. Since childhood, he's been horrendously insistent on being on time. Nothing changes for the better: he's on edge and running low on his stash -- he bought more than enough, he thought; it should have lasted him until now -- and when he tries to find some way to get it, Emily has to go and interfere. Hating her would be so easy.

Self-important Emily Prentiss, the Ambassador's daughter, fluent in Arabic and God knows what else, one of the main reasons they managed to foil Jind Allah's attempted mass infection -- she might not be a genius, but she's close enough to perfect for the BAU that it doesn't matter. It all fits together perfectly: he's the new Elle, Emily's the new him; soon enough, he'll put the team in danger with his weakness and he'll be out. Then things will go back to equilibrium and he'll flounder and destroy himself alone.

No one will care; they're teammates and nothing else. Before, when he was too naive to know better, he thought it meant something that they spent so much time together, but it doesn't. All the subtext there is that they would rather work than have their lives. Hotch has his wife and Jack, Gideon has Sarah, Morgan has a line of girls waiting for him to open up and call them "baby girl" the way he does Garcia, but it makes no difference. The BAU comes before anything else. That's just a given.

So what, they know some of each other's secrets? Spencer hasn't heard anything new in weeks, and he only used to because people trusted him not to talk to anyone. The team only knows about Diana Reid because the Fisher King was a threat to her safety. Only the team, Dennison and Gordinski, James Barfield, and Carl Buford know Morgan was molested; had it not come out because of a case, it's something a friend would know; given the circumstances, it's practically shop talk. Mom's schizophrenia is water cooler chat, the same way the Super Bowl would have been anywhere but here.

Even Gideon, Spencer's mentor, who gave him some purpose when he thought that was impossible, and JJ, whom, in some half-mad daydream, he thought he could deserve, aren't his friends. Gideon only tried to help him with his nightmares so the team wouldn't suffer, and JJ only humored him with a date because of his birthday. What else should Spencer interpret from all the inaction on their parts? Friends would do something; friends would tell him to stop. The team hasn't done that, ergo they must not be friends. Logically, the syllogism is pathetically simply. Elle thought the same thing, and Spencer can't see how she could have been wrong. If he weren't supposedly some kind of genius, the team wouldn't want him around at all.

Outside the homeless shelter, he hovers and wonders what would happen if he snuck away and tried to pick something up. Emily's not Morgan, she wouldn't even pretend to give him the benefit of confidence. She'd probably pick up the phone and tattle to Hotch before Spencer could get outside a three-block radius. Why she looks so consternated when she emerges is beyond him, for the moment. Perhaps he didn't need to tell Angie what he did, perhaps he left her unreasonably scared, but he doesn't deserve the glare he's getting.

"What's the matter with you?" Emily demands. If only Morgan could have been so blunt -- if he'd skipped the subtlety earlier, Spencer might not have been able to deflect. Help would have been demanded without his consent, without giving him the chance to float in his denial.

By now, deflection is second nature, acting befuddled by reality is all too natural. "What -- what do you mean, what's the matter with me?"

"I've never seen you act like this."

Snapping at her happens before Spencer can even think that it might be a bad idea, that maybe she doesn't deserve it, and that there's a chance she wasn't simply digging around for something that would knock him down a few pegs. Whether she looks hurt or simply flabbergasted, he can't tell, but the possibility of the former nestles itself in the lowest pit of his stomach. Since he hardly eats these days, its company is the other things he won't discuss: the tract marks he now has to hide, why he's put more sugar than usual in his coffee since New York, Tobias and Charles and Raphael, Alexa Lisbon, all the things he can't reconcile and, as such, tries not to acknowledge. Festering is what things like this do best, and they do it so well together.

Emily isn't even the only one he snaps at -- Hotch escapes it, by virtue of being Spencer's boss, and Gideon skips out too, but this doesn't stop at being irritated by Perfect Emily Prentiss. Temper this bad is something uncharacteristic for him. If anything, he's always been too calm for normal people to handle. Now, everything sets him alight in ways that make no sense. He can almost see his bridges burning below his feet every time he tells someone off for something insignificant. The words aren't his, but they're in his voice, and inside him somewhere, the real Spencer, or some unacknowledged strength, cries out and tells him to stop saying what he doesn't mean... but he can't do it. Any time he considers trying, his reaction is anaphylactic: his lungs spasm, his throat closes up; it's a wonder he doesn't cry or break out in hives.

Routine is the salve that doesn't do him wrong. In the morning, he primes his concoction -- Costa Rican beans, table sugar, and dihydromorphinone; the only mixture that can get him through the day. Lunch starts out hit or miss, he may not drug himself if things go well, but when they don't, he knows he has to make allowances for his habit; after a week or so (he's stopped keeping track), he has to give himself a break, he needs his fix. At night, when he's alone again, Dilaudid sings him to sleep better than "A Parliament of Fowls." His highs are hardly wearing off each time he gets a new one, but he can't afford to let them get that far. He knows what will happen if he does.

Dreaming gets no easier; if anything, his dreams get more surreal. He writes them all down while his morning coffee percolates -- one night, he's covered in tattoos, spirals and tribal designs he can't decipher, and a parasite snugs throughout his chest, daring him to cut it out. Another time, he meanders through a war zone, the gray and blighted landscape no comfort until Elle's silhouette rises from the ground; he runs to catch her, knocks her down, and knows her, Biblically, the way he could never know JJ. Her hands are cold, her naked body paler than he would have thought, and the only time she kisses him, it tastes like smoke; he nearly chokes on it and his lungs turn to ash inside his chest. When they're done, Raphael grabs Spencer off her and throws him into a tiny cell; the walls and bars close in around him, and Spencer never sees his captor, but the voice that quotes Leviticus is unmistakable.

All too often, he dreams of Tobias -- Tobias killing him like a stuck deer, Tobias feeling inside him, Tobias tying him up, Tobias's dead eyes. He dreams of the shack, of how it chilled him to the bones, and he always wakes up shivering. Waiting for the base of his morning necessity, he huddles at the kitchen table, in a sweater and a heavy blanket, and even together, they aren't enough. Loneliness is colder than the blank expanse of future stretched out before him like a corpse prepared for autopsy, than the early onset stages of withdrawal.

One morning, Spencer almost calls someone, he almost bares his soul. Impatiently shaking, he goes through his phone's list of contacts -- Garcia's cell, Garcia's direct line, Gideon's cell, Hotch's cell, JJ at home, JJ's cell, Morgan's cell, Prentiss... but what is he thinking? He can't call any of them. There's only one name on the list he doesn't work with, Ethan, and they haven't spoken in so long that he has to question the wisdom of making a call. What would Ethan say, what could he tell him that Spencer doesn't already know? Nothing useful, Spencer bets -- and the only other person Spencer could talk to can't take calls, she's probably having an episode right now anyway. This is worse than being ten years old and wondering how he'll get to school registration, worse than the office to which Dad never returns.

In the deepest pit, Challenger Deep in Marina Trench, thirty-six thousand feet from life, his ears deaf from the submersion and the sediment rubbing his back like a mother, Spencer finds a tender Tobias, a gentle one like the one who drugged him. This Tobias has soft hands, unbecoming of a hunter, and he drags them across every inch of Spencer's skin. Holding down Spencer's arms, he rips into Spencer's body, takes him hard and merciless, and as the joint weight of Tobias and the water crushes his chest, Spencer watches the foraminifera drifting by. Oh, to have a life so simple, to not need to cleave so hard when living should be simple, a habit that requires no needles or excess of sugar.

In New Orleans, things fall apart. He's not as edgy as he was in Houston, having a routine for getting high makes him calmer and sedate -- but in place of that irksome quality, his performance slips instead. Turning his phone off feels all too strange, but ignoring Prentiss doesn't hurt him any. Missing the flight is so simple, but it doesn't feel right. Falling into Ethan's apartment, into kissing him, into more than that but nothing that really counts as sex... it happens too, too naturally, and everything around is too, too solid, why can't it all just melt away? When Morgan tells him, "The unsub's a woman," the subtext needs no explanation: it's not been that long since New York, since Spencer picked out a teenage girl by looking at a threatening note; how the Hell could he miss that now? True, he picked out Sarah Danlon's modus operandi, her imitation of Jack the Ripper, but some sign of her gender had to be there.

After the case, it's Gideon who comes to find him, in the bar where Ethan plays piano. Spencer's lied to Morgan and Prentiss about the missed flight, he's told them what they expect to hear given the story and how distant with them he's grown, but the look Gideon gives him sends his expectations crumbling. It makes no accusations or pretensions, and Gideon says nothing, waits for Spencer to be ready in a way that no one else would, a comfort that someone who was just a boss wouldn't allow. How long now has he told himself that they aren't friends, that all he means to Gideon is his brain and service to the team?

"How did you find me?" he asks softly.

With a smile, Gideon affirms, "You're not that hard to profile."

They exchange words while Ethan finishes up his set and sit together on the ride back home; no one says anything for the whole flight. Emily and JJ get reading done, Morgan puts his headphones on, and after calling Jack and Haley, Hotch falls dead silent. Brewing storms have never been so loud about their work. The drive back to the Bureau is equally quiet, and everyone files into the bull-pen like mourners at a wake. Everyone disperses, only Hotch and Gideon are together; while they chat with each other, Spencer sits at his desk and fusses with a pencil. When he hears Hotch call him to his office, Spencer almost wonders if it isn't an early auditory hallucination -- between his genetic predisposition and everything he goes through, going crazy would be no surprise.

As he trudges up the stairs, Spencer's sure that he knows what's coming. He missed the flight, he disobeyed orders from a superior office; he's going to get chewed out, suspended, God only knows what else. Keeping with this expectation, Hotch and Gideon are waiting for him... but neither sits behind the desk. Hotch has his arms crossed over his chest, but neither of their expressions have the anger they're supposed to -- even in Hotch's face, where Spencer anticipates the most cold fire, the most outage at their pet genius disappointing them, all he can make out is deep concern. Spencer swallows thickly, looks from one to the other, and when neither speaks, he hazards to prod, "...Yes, sir?" Hotch doesn't respond fast enough: "...Gideon?"

"Shut the door, Spencer," Gideon instructs gently. "No one else needs to hear this."

Spencer does as he's told before asking, "...They don't need to hear what?"

"We know what's going on Reid," Hotch answers without hesitation. "We know about the drugs."

Spencer bows his head in preparation for what has to be coming; he tries to make a fallout shelter of his hair, now glad that he never bothered getting it cut, that he hasn't since before Elle left the team. You're becoming a danger to the team. Your performance is slipping. You're this close to getting fired, and if you don't stop, I'll have no choice but to report this to Strauss. I only haven't done so yet because you're a member of my team and I trust you. Don't make me regret that, Reid. He may not be that hard to profile, but predicting these fill-in-the-blank superior officer to drug-addled special agent answers is so simple that Spencer's high and has no trouble. He knows where his place is in the team: he's the idiot genius who got himself in trouble and wasn't strong enough to stop. Hotch is telling him off only as a boss.

"We're worried about you, Spencer." It sounds like something Gideon should say, but it's in Hotch's voice, and he continues talking when, taken aback, Spencer looks up again. "The whole team is." When Spencer can't bring himself to respond, Hotch goes on, "We're all here for you, Spencer, and we're not going to lose you. I won't let that happen."

"I'm sorry that you're even in this position, Spencer," Gideon chimes in with frank solemnity, his apology so earnest that, for the first time in weeks, Spencer shakes with something besides early withdrawal. "If I could, I would do this for you, and I'm sorry that I haven't taken better care of you when you've needed it most."

In vain, Spencer tells himself that he won't cry, but before he knows it, tears roll down his cheeks and Hotch's arms are around his middle. His arms wrap tight around Hotch's shoulders, his face burrows into Hotch's neck, and his lower lip hurts where he's biting it so hard. Gideon's hand moving up and down his back is a warm comfort more earnest than his drugs, but it strangely doesn't help at all, it only makes his weakling sobs come closer to the surface, gasping for air and forcing their way out in a jagged, unpredictable rhythm.

They let him have it out until the sobs subside, until the tears come out but do so quietly -- Spencer can't remember when he's ever cried so hard. Pulling back from Hotch, he rests against Gideon instead, Gideon's one arm paternal around his insubstantial shoulders. It's bound to be some miracle that he keeps eye contact when Hotch tells him, "Take a long weekend, Reid. Turn your phone off, don't even think about the office or the cases. Just work on getting yourself well."

Spencer nods, but before he can say anything, Gideon tells him, "Spencer, can you please step outside for a minute." There isn't any question hidden in his tone or phrasing, so Spencer ducks outside. Before heading to the stairs, where he settles and tries to eavesdrop, he makes sure the door is cracked enough for him to hear.

"I know you two are close, Jason, but if both of you are unavailable until Monday, I'm down two of my team members and I'll be stuck if something comes up."

"How many weeks did we have between Houston and New Orleans, Hotch?"

"That isn't the point. If a new case comes up immediately and you two aren't here--"

"Hotch, he's been closing himself off and losing his trust in the rest of us. You know as well as I do how he'll be feeling -- hopeless, alone, vulnerable... I am not letting him go through that with no one else there."

"We can go in shifts, Jason, the whole team--"

"He needs something more than just the team right now--"

The door opens and a third voice joins in the debate: "You're talking about Reid?" Morgan. What he thinks he's doing, Spencer can't even begin to fathom. "What's happening? How can I help?"

"I know we all want to help Reid," Hotch says, his forced calm audibly straining. "But if we don't find some way to keep this organized, he really will be better off without us."

After a short silence, Gideon insists, "I am not leaving him to go through this alone." That really should be where the discussion ends; everything about Gideon's tone implies the And that's final that, being a professional, he leaves out.

Although Spencer intends to listen in to more, a soft, "Hey, Reid," pulls his attentions back around to his seat upon the stairs. Looking down from Hotch's office door, he sees Emily, JJ, and Garcia, all lined up like the Fates where, if he were stupid, he could try to make his escape. To his left, Garcia looks the most overtly sympathetic, while JJ might cry for any number of good reasons and Emily is, as usual, more stoic. Did the whole team plan this, or something? Was getting him alone with Hotch and Gideon just the first part of some whole team intervention plot? ...No, that makes no sense. If the whole team were involved, then Morgan wouldn't have needed to ask what was going on... this must just be some well-timed coincidence.

There are any number of stories that Garcia could be thinking of telling as a means of getting through to him, from coming to the BAU only to find that the skinny little prodigy from CalTech had beaten her there to watching him with Nathan and knowing he was meant to be here, saving people from the worst things imaginable, but all she manages is, "Whatever it takes, you... you -- please get better, boy genius, or I swear to God, I will--"

"Penelope," JJ interrupts carefully. "Spence... what she means to say is that you don't need to feel alone. We're all here for you, and that's not going to change. We care about you."

He thanks them, says he knows, and with a few other assorted pleasantries, JJ and Garcia disperse; as they go, he tells them that he'll be fine. Outgrowing his habit of deflecting personal concerns, of hiding when being emotionally honest gets to be so hard... this process will take ages for him. Even when he and Morgan -- Derek -- fall together, coalesce into a whole that's more than the sum of their parts, in their earliest months as something more, Spencer will try to brush off a dangerous investigation with how he hasn't seen Mom in too long to be allowed. Even though JJ and Garcia leave – probably, Spencer thinks, to comfort each other, to reassure themselves that he isn't lying to them this time – Emily hangs around, her odd expression entirely unreadable, some nagging hint of guilt or unforeseen knowledge behind it. She, too, has problems keeping eye contact, and she leans against the railing before speaking to him.

"Reid," she says, "I know we haven't really gotten off on the right foot here… and I don't want to presume to know what you're going through, but I – if you ever want someone to talk to… well, you know where to find me."

He looks up to meet her eyes and, in a voice that, even through the lingering haze of his last hit, he recognizes as his own, whispers, "I'm sorry, Emily."

Whatever she isn't telling him about this, whatever knowledge she shouldn't have – she's an Ambassador's daughter; sure, she's lived everywhere, learned languages enough to put the rest of the team to shame, and she's proven herself more than competent on their team… but that doesn't mean she has intimate knowledge or familiarity with addiction, it doesn't fit her profile – but, even so, it's gnawing on her like the cravings do on him. Worse than that, he owes her an apology. She deserves one more than all the others; he let himself be outright cruel when she did nothing to deserve it.

He doesn't envy her for having whatever schooling informs that offhand smile. "It's not your fault, Reid." Is she talking about the Dilaudid, about when he verbally attacked her, or is she speaking about something else? "Drugs can make you say things that you don't mean."

"I – I did mean it, though," he admits weakly. "I… I was angry – upset that you… you haven't known me as long as Morgan, or JJ, definitely not as long as Gideon, but… you read the signs better than anyone. You were the only one being blunt with me… and I didn't like it that no one else was reaching out." Being honest hurts like withdrawal. He might need to stop soon, unless some blessed interruption comes.

"Trust me, Reid," she says. "As someone else who knows, that wasn't you I was talking to in Houston. Drugs make you… they hold on and don't let go, Reid, and they don't want to share you with anybody." She pauses and extends a hand; cautiously, Spencer interlocks their fingers. "You're stronger than they are, Reid. You have to fight them, and I have faith in you."

For a moment, Spencer is almost ungrateful. He wants to ask her how she knows, and how, only having known him for a few months, she can have so much faith in him to beat this thing he can't even really name, but then he meets her gaze. Looking in her eyes is like nothing Reid's ever felt before. Exactly what it is, he can't quite place – he's been with other people who knew the same things that he does, and he's found kindred spirits in others before, but something else is going on here. He opens his mouth and can't find the words, and just when he thinks that they might be there, he feels a heavier, stronger hand than hers on his shoulder. Breaking his locked gaze with her, he looks up into Gideon's eyes.

"Come on, Spencer," he says. "Let's go home."

The long weekend, Wednesday night to Monday morning, is excruciating, the worst pain that Spencer's ever been in, and there's nothing he can do to make it easier for himself. At least Gideon's with him, at least he has the strongest support network that he can think of. Every morning, Gideon makes him coffee (and gets the proper ratio of sugar to coffee, something Spencer thought no one else can manage) and breakfast, and even though the chills and nausea set in soon after, even though he never manages to keep much down, Spencer's grateful. When he sits on the sofa, cocooned in blankets, he has to wonder whether or not the withdrawal will get him overheating soon. Even Gideon's hand on his back can't help with that – but the first interruption of this momentary peace doesn't come from sweating or even from the sharp, shaking, bone-deep pain of coming off Dilaudid.

"Does your mother know yet?" Gideon asks quietly, watching Spencer as he tries to write Mom another letter.

"I told her I was sick yesterday," Spencer says, barely above a whisper. Morgan and JJ came over after Hotch let them go home for the weekend; they stayed awhile, made sure Spencer was as okay as he could be. Something's wrong. Responding shouldn't be this difficult. Even when he's admitting to things he doesn't want to air, he shouldn't have this much trouble. "I – I don't know how to break it to her, she… she has too much faith in me not to get into things like this out here."

"You don't have to tell her until you're ready."

Spencer doesn't know when he'll ever be ready to admit that he let his mother down in the worst way possible, but he's certainly not ready for what comes next. His stomach feels worse than it has yet. Clawing his way to standing, he gambols down the hallway and flings himself into the bathroom. He falls to his knees, slides hard across the chilly tiles to the toilet, and what he hasn't eaten comes up too, too readily. Time slips away into the pain; Spencer isn't even aware that it goes forward until Gideon pulls his hair back for him.

In the next few months, he comes to rely on Gideon perhaps even more than he did when he first joined the team. More than anyone else, Gideon becomes his anchor, his rock, and when he disappears, Spencer floats without aim – he comes to work, he does his job, and, even so, when they get back from Denver, from dealing with unsubs who destroy entire families, he puts a chair outside of Gideon's office. He sits there well past when he should have gone home, staring at the entrance and waiting. Statistically, the chances that he'll get what he wants are almost negligible, but he still looks at the door and hoping that, perhaps, Gideon will walk through it. It was all a mistake, he just needed some extra time, he'll apologize and Spencer will hug him, and everything will be okay…

"Reid, it's midnight." He looks up into Hotch's eyes, and sees that concern again. It's still weird. "What are you still doing here?"

"I… I know we've been okay without him," Spencer explains. "But, I just keep hoping…"

"Take a long weekend, Reid. Get some rest, clear your head."

Hotch lets Spencer hug him again, but Spencer doesn't tell him what he actually plans to do. There's only one person he can be honest with right now, and the next morning, he's on a flight down to New Orleans. Ethan's sofa welcomes him back as though he never left, and Ethan makes him coffee.

When Ethan asks how Spencer's been, quivering his hand by way of making his specific intention clear, Spencer tells him all about Gideon and how he left, how hard the past few weeks have been. "I can't do it without him, Ethan," he concludes, his voice breathy, weak, trembling. "I – I'm not strong enough."

Ethan sighs and heads for his desk drawer. "Never thought I'd get to do this twice, Reid," he says wearily as he paws through it. "Not that I don't like getting to see you, but you know you can't just come down here every time the going gets rough."

He drops a pamphlet into Spencer's lap; emblazoned across the top in stark black letters are two words: Narcotics Anonymous.

It's several months before Spencer breaks and admits that he needs to go. The cravings are intense, to the point of impeding his focus, so he goes to a meeting.

~*~

That's where he should be right now – a meeting. He shouldn't be here, dumping all of these problems on Gideon. It's been long enough that Gideon has no need of him, and he should have no need of Gideon. What is he even doing here? Maybe it's a valid desire, wanting to see if he's past any of what he remembers, but when just talking to Gideon brings up things like these, it's obvious that he's not. It's one of the downsides to an eidetic memory: he remembers everything, and even when he integrates new things into is view of the world, he can never be fully past them. Making Gideon meet him was a low move, even for him, which his stomach seems to realize. Dinner's come and gone, and Spencer hasn't touched his milkshake in half an hour.

With a sigh, Spencer looks out the window. It's getting dark… he could call Derek and just go back to the hotel. Anything he might have wanted, he's not getting, and, really, he shouldn't impose on Gideon any more than he already has. Gideon left the BAU to find some peace of mind, some faith in happy endings, and here Spencer is, challenging the fact that he has both of these things. It's not fair to Gideon for Spencer to stay. He has a normal life now; doesn't he deserve to keep that?

"I should go." He stands up and pulls out his wallet. "How much do I owe you for dinner?"

"Come on, Spencer," Gideon insists. Inexplicably, he delves into his backpack. "Stay a little longer. You've got until morning anyway, right?" Gideon sets a travel chessboard on the table and smiles. "Play with me."


End file.
